spirit W9> hwrtw s&tn Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/expositorsdictioOOnicorich THE EXPOSITOR'S DICTIONARY OF TEXTS CONTAINING OUTLINES, EXPOSITIONS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF BIBLE TEXTS, WITH FULL REFERENCES TO THE BEST HOMILETIC LITERATURE EDITED BY THE REV. SIR W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL. D. AMD JANE T. STODDART WITH THE CO-OPERATION OP THE REV. JAMES MOFFATT, M.A, D. D. IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME ONE GENESIS TO ST. MARK HODDER AND STOUGHTON NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY ►ngo'ixa hit :aT to yjiamoitom • [g T M . '>] • • » • • . CONTENTS GENESIS . EXODUS . LEVITICUS NUMBERS DEUTERONOMY PAGE 1 73 123 127 142 JOSHUA 166 JUDGES 173 RUTH 196 THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL . . .201 THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL . . 219 THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS . . .230 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS . . .254 THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. 274 THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES 292 EZRA 299 NEHEMIAH 301 ESTHER 307 JOB 314 PSALMS 363 PROVERBS 513 ECCLESIASTES 531 MM SONG OF SOLOMON 558 ISAIAH 572 JEREMIAH 650 LAMENTATIONS 67l EZEKIEL 676 DANIEL ........ 706 HOSEA 726 JOEL 784 AMOS 786 OBADIAH 789 JONAH ........ 740 MICAH 748 NAHUM 751 HABAKKUK 751 ZEPHANIAH 754 HAGGAI 754 ZECHARIAH 755 MALACHI 764 ST. MATTHEW 769 ST. MARK 988 Ra1£SS5S THE EXPOSITOR'S DICTIONARY OF TEXTS THE BOOK OF GENESIS COPYRIGHT, 1910 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY GENESIS r GENESIS In the British Museum Library there is a folio Latin Bible, published in 1546, which contains marginal notes by various Reformers. In the narrow space above the heading of Genesis two and a half lines have been inserted. The Latin sentence tells us that ' the whole Book of Genesis excels in sweetness all other books and histories '. The German reads : ' There is no more beautiful and more lovable little book '. At the end of the inscription are the initials in Greek letters : ' Ph. M.,' i.e. Philip Melanchthon. THE BOOK OF GENESIS It was on the book of Genesis that Luther delivered his last lectures in the Autumn of 1545. At the conclusion of his lecture on 17 November he said: ' This is the beloved Genesis ; God grant that after me it may be better done. I can do no more — I am weak. Pray God that He may grant me a good and happy end.' He began no new lectures. GENESIS— THE BOOK OF BEGINNINGS The book of Genesis is the book of origins. There is nothing final in this book. The Divine plan of redemption is not fully unfolded, but the first move- ments in history towards its outworking are clearly revealed. There are three divisions. I. Generations. — In this division there are two sections. f(a) We have the Bible declaration of the origin of the material universe, and it is one in which faith finds reasonable foundation. The evolutionary pro- cess has never been able to discover a link between the highest form of animal life and man; that link is * supplied in the affirmation ' God created man in His j) own image '. f (b) The relation of man to God and nature was conditiond by a simple and yet perfectly clear com- mand, which indicated the limits of liberty. Man was completed by the bringing to him of one who was of himself, and in whom he found the true complement of his own nature. II. Degeneration. — Everything commences with the individual. Spiritual evil took material form to reach spiritual man through the material side of his being. Moving swiftly upon the degradation of the individual came that of the family. The race moved on, but the shadow of the issue of sin was on the whole of them. This ended in a Divine interference of swift and overwhelming judgment. Out of the devastation a remnant was saved, and human history started forward upon a new basis, as there emerged a new idea of social relationship, that of the nation. The book chronicles the story of the failure of this national idea. Finally, the time of continuity from Shem to Abram is declared. III. Regeneration The regeneration of the in- dividual gives us the account of the dealings of God with three men: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In this study of the beginnings of the regeneration of the individual the truth is revealed that the one principle through which God is able to operate is that of faith in Himself. Through the sons of Jacob the circle widens, and we see the movement toward the regeneration of the family. Through years God purged the family and society, and in the final verses of the book of Genesis the national idea is seen for a moment as a prophecy and a hope. — G. Campbell, Morgan, The Analysed Bible, p. 3. THE CREATION Genesis i. and ii. Every writing must be judged by the object the writer has in view. If the object of the writer of these chapters was to convey physical information, then certainly it is imperfectly fulfilled. But if his object was to give an intelligible account of God's re- lation to the world and to man, then it must be owned that he has been successful in the highest degree. In- timate communion with God, a spirit trained to dis- cern spiritual things, a perfect understanding and zeal for God's purpose, these are qualities quite indepen- dent of a knowledge of the discoveries of science. I. This then is the first lesson of the Bible — that at the root and origin of all this vast universe there abides a living, conscious Spirit, who wills and knows and fashions all things. The belief of this changes for us the whole face of nature, and instead of a chill, impersonal world of forces to which no appeal can be made, and in which matter is supreme, gives us the home of a Father. This becomes immensely clearer as we pass into the world of man. II. The other great truth that this writer teaches is that man was the chief work of God, for whose sake all else was brought into being. It is conceivable that in this scarcely discernible speck in the vastness of the universe should be played out the chief est act in the history of God. To Him who maintains these systems in their respective relations and orbits it can be no burden to relieve the needs of individuals. — Marcus Dods, The Book of Genesis, p. 1. OOD THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS Genesis L, ii. 1-3. There is a Persian fable that God created the world a vast plain and sent His angels to sow it with flower Ver. L GENESIS I Ver. l. seeds. But Satan was watching, bent on destruction. He buried every seed underground; he called on the rain to fall and rot God's handiwork, and so, he thought, creation was destroyed. But as he stood gazing the seeds began to grow; they rose into the sunlight and opened into a thousand forms of beauty. The new world in all its wonder revealed the wisdom and the power of the Creator. ' How do you know whether there be a God ? ' was asked once of a Bedouin, and he replied: ' How do I know whether a camel or a man passed my tent last night — by their footprints in the sand'. CREATED! 1 God created the earth.' — Genesis i. i. Some words do not terminate in themselves. 'Created' is only the first syllable in an infinitely greater word. What if at the end it should turn out that all the words expressive of power, wisdom, love, care, should be run into one grand vocable? I. The word ' created ' is but the first syllable of all the words that belong to it, and they a million thick, squared and cubed by other millions up to the point of infinity. God not only created the world, He drowned the world, and in Sodom and Gomorrah He typically burned the world, and in John He so loved the world as to redeem it with blood: all this is implied in the word ' create '. We must break create as a word up into its constituent particles or elements ; it is a multi- tudinous word, a verbal host, a countless throng of ideas, suggestions, encouragements, responsibilities. II. God created the earth, God destroyed the earth by drowning, God burned the earth with fire, and after all these processes we come to John in. 16, * God loved the world '. Love is a bigger word than create. Love will never give up the world. It is given to love to save the whole earth. III. We might now reverse the process. Instead of saying, God created, destroyed, redeemed, loved, we might say loved, redeemed, destroyed, created. This is one of the great words that reads the same backwards as forwards. There are a few such words in the English language. All the time God is creat- ing the earth. Do not imagine that creation is a separate and final act; it is God's inclusive ministry. Whatever He does is an aspect of creation, forma- tion, culture, development, and ultimate sanctifica- tion, and crowning with the bays and garlands of the heavenly paradise. God is creating man. There is an elementary sense in which man was created countless centuries ago: there is a spiritual sense in which man is being created every day. ' Ye must be born again ' is the gospel of every sunrise ; every day is birthday. We are born into a higher life, a nobler conception, a fuller manhood. IV. At what period of this process are we standing? Some of us are standing at the period of chastisement. We are being drowned or we are being burned, we are being sorely smitten or utterly desolated ; but God has promised that He will see that a remnant remains out of which He will grow the flower of immortality. — Joseph Parkes, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 128. THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS 'In the beginning God.' — Genesis i. I, From some points of view the book of Genesis is the most interesting in the Bible. It is the book of be- ginnings, the book of origins, the book of the story of God's dealings with man. It has an interest and an importance to which no other document of antiquity can pretend. When we turn to the study of Genesis as a whole, the first thing we notice is the unity of plan in the book. Though forming part of a greater whole it also is a complete work. It was written to show how Israel, in answer to the call, and in accordance with the purpose of God, gradually emerged from among many other tribes and peoples, into a separate and distinct existence as the people of Jehovah. I. Genesis emphasizes the Divine sovereignty and supremacy. Its opening words are as emphatic a testimony to this as can be found in the whole Bible. The Bible makes no attempt to prove the existence of God, nor does it strive to prove the supremacy of God. But look on the book before us. In it every- thing is traced up to God. God is sovereign, God is supreme, God is first. Therefore Genesis evidences itself to be a true revelation from God. But what is true of the book is true also of life. Our lives are meant to be revelations of God. This cannot be until by utter consecration of ourselves to Him we have in our lives made God first. II. Genesis emphasizes the Divine grace and love. The revelation of the Bible is essentially a revelation of redemption, and the redemption note is sounded from the first. The whole record of Genesis is a re- cord of the grace of God combating man's sin. The whole story is a story of Divine love, the story of One with whom judgment is a strange work. And this love throughout all this book is seen working with a purpose. III. Genesis emphasizes the Divine holiness. It represents God as approachable to men, and yet as unapproachable by men. This book teaches us what subsequent revelation confirms, that if the sinner is to approach God so as to be accepted by Him, he must approach God in the way of God's appointment. But this is a lesson which, in our day, we need specially to learn. We dwell so much on the Divine love and the riches of the Divine grace that we are apt to for- get that the grace is only bestowed upon us in the Beloved. In our joy at the revelation which Christ made to us of the love of God, we are in danger of forgetting that that love of God reaches men so as to save them only through Jesus Christ. — H. C. Mac- gregor, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 3. THE HOLY TRINITY (For Trinity Sunday) 'In the beginning God.'— Genesis i. i. Some people tell us that we cannot find any mention of the word 'Trinity' in the Bible. Perhaps not; Ver. 1. GENESIS I Ver. 3. but we do find, what is more important, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity most clearly set forth. I. What saith the Scriptures ? — The Scriptures which have been brought before us in our services to-day are all concerned with the blessed truth that our God is a Triune God, and that in the unity of the Godhead there are three Persons — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The First Lesson this morning set before us the vision granted to Isaiah of the thrice-holy God, and in the Second Lesson we read of St. John's vision wherein was re- vealed the threefold omnipotence of God — which is, which was, and which is to be, the Almighty. This evening we read as our First Lesson the first chapter of the Bible, which tells us of God creating the world by the Word, after that the Spirit had moved upon the face of the waters ; and in the Second Lesson (Ephesians iv.) we notice St. Paul's reference to One Father, One Lord, and One Spirit. These are but samples, as it were, of the teaching of the Scrip- tures on the great and glorious truth we think of to-day. II. What saith the Church ? — It is not possible for us to understand the great mystery thus brought before us, but the Church in some measure explains what it involves. In the Apostles' Creed we have brought before us the definite work of each Person in the Blessed Trinity. In the Nicene Creed this is still more clearly defined. In the Athanasian Creed we have the relation of these three Persons each to the other, presented to our view. III. God, the Centre of the Universe. — The in- spiring thought which comes to us from a considera- tion of our text is the Triune God as the Centre of all things. This first chapter of Genesis reminds us of God as the Centre of the universe. ' In the beginning God.' That is our faith in regard to the world. Geologists and scientists may tell us that the world is much older than anyone imagines, but that does not affect our faith. What does it matter to us if the world is millions of years old? We go back to the beginning of things and say that whenever that time was, God was the Creator of the universe. No scientific teaching can get behind that. Many scien- tists admit that there must have been a first cause, but they cannot explain to us on scientific principles what it was. It is here that the Bible supplies what is missing, and it tells us that, ' In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth '. That is the bed- rock upon which the Christian takes his stand; thus he can give an answer to all the criticisms and doubts of the scientists. What the scientist cannot explain the humble believer can appreciate in the light of God's own revelation. And just as God created the world, so He upholds all things by the Word of His power. When he looks up into the heavens the be- liever sees behind and beyond all else ' the Glory of God ' ; and when he considers this great universe he thinks of it as God's handiwork. This thought gives a new interest to the study of nature ; and the beauty of it all is that the Christian believer knows that He Who was the Creator, and is the Centre of the universe, is his loving Heavenly Father. IV. God, the Centre of the Affairs of this Life God was not only the Creator of the world; He re- mains the Centre of its affairs. He it is Who makes and dethrones kings. He it is Who governs all things in earth. This is a truth which is not realized so often as it should be. Men talk of empires as though they could build them up as and when they wished; but depend upon it the empire in which He is not recognized rests upon an unstable foundation. The empire that will endure is that which is built on the eternal principles of righteousness. V. God, the Centre of the Individual Life But, lastly, what God is in the universe and in the affairs of men, that He is also in the individual life. Are we conscious of this great truth that the great Triune God is the Centre of our life? that in Him we live and move and have our being? Do we realize the con- trolling, the guiding, the inspiring, the impelling power of God in our own individual life? If not, it is because we have let sin have dominion over us, and thus God has been shut out. References. — I. 1. — H. P. Liddon, University Sermons (2nd series), p. 38, 1890; Sermons and Addresses, p. 56. W. H. Dutchings, Sermon Sketches, p. 54. A. Coote, Twelve Ser- mons, p. 20. T. G. Bonney, Sermons on Questions of the Day, p. 1. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons, vol. i. p. 179. E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxviii. p. 331. B. Jowett, Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, p. 282. J. C. M. Bel- lew, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 241. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Ser- mons, vol. iv. p. 1. I. 1-5. — C. H. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 660. I. 2. — A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 138. Bishop Browne, Old Testament Outlines, p. 2. ight.'- fiftp ' God said, Let there be light, and there was light Genesis i. 3. Dr. A. C. Bradley quotes these words in his Oxford Lectures on Poetry, pp. 57, 58. He says, ' I will take a last example. It has probably been men- tioned in almost every account of the sublime since Longinus quoted it in his work on Elevation of Style. And it is of special interest here because it illus- trates at one and the same time the two kinds of sublimity which we are engaged in distinguishing. " God said, Let there be light, and there was light." The idea of the first and instantaneous appearance of light, and that the whole light of the whole world is sublime; and its primary appeal is to sense. The further idea, that this transcendently glorious ap- parition is due to mere words, to a breath — our symbol of tenuity, evanescence, impotence to influ- ence material bulk — heightens enormously the im- pression of absolutely immeasurable power.' ' Let there be light.'— Genesis i. 3. There is a very remarkable reference to this passage in the writings of St. John of the Cross (Obras Es- pirituales, vol. ii. p. 394). The Spanish mystic is seeking to draw a clear contrast between the dark night of the soul, as it is understood by the saints, and the darkness of sin. There may be two reasons, he says, why the eye fails to see. It may be in 8 Ver. 3. GENESIS I Ver. 3, 4. obscurity (a escuras), or it may be blind. ' God is the light and the true object of the soul; and when He fails to illuminate it, the soul is in darkness, although its vision may remain very keen. When it is in sin, or when the appetite is filled with other things, it is blind.' ' Una cosa es estar a escuras, otra estar en tinieblas.' By the first he means the darkness of vision, a darkness caused by excess of light ; by the second he means the gross darkness of sin. He uses the expression ' ciego en pecado ' — ' blind in sin '. ' But he who lives in obscurity may live there with- out sin. And this in two ways : as regards his natural being which receives no light from some natural things, and as regards his supernatural being, which receives no light from many supernatural things. Un- til the Lord said, Fiat lux there was darkness over the face of the deep cavern of the soul's understanding. The deeper that abyss, and themoreprofoundits caves, so much the deeper and more unfathomable is the darkness when God, who is Light, does not illuminate them with His beams.' Of itself, the writer goes on, the soul can travel only from one darkness to another — ' guiado por aquella tiniebla, porque no puede Suiar unatiniebla sino a otra teniebla ' — (' guided by the darkness itself, because one darkness can lead only to another darkness '). He continues — ' As David says: "Dies diet eructat verbum, et nox nocti indicat scientiam". [Psalm xix. 2, ' Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge '.] And thus the writer adds ' one deep of darkness call- eth to another, and one deep of light to another deep of light '. ' Everywhere like calls to like, and thus to that light of grace which God has given the soul already (having opened its inward eyes to the Divine light, and made it well-pleasing to Himself) there calls another deep of grace, I mean the Divine transforma- tion of the soul in God in which the eye of the under- standing remains fully enlightened and well-pleasing unto Him.' Genesis i. 3. Coleridge, in his lectures on Shakespeare, observes that Shakespeare's plays are distinguished from those ■ of other dramatists by the characteristic of 'expecta- tion in preference to surprise. It is like the true read- ing of the passage: "God said, Let there be light, and there was light"; not, there was light. As the feelings with which we startle at a shooting star, ■ compared with that of watching the sunrise at the pre-established moment, such law is surprise com- pared with expectation.' A LIGHT UNTO OUR PATH 'And God said, Let there be light ; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.'— Genesis I. 3, 4. ' Let there be light.' It is at once the motto and the condititon of all progress that is worthy of the name. From chaos into order, from slumber into wakefulness, from torpor into the glow of life — yes, and ' from strength to strength ' ; it has been a con- dition of progress that there should be light. God saw the light, that it was good. We thank God for His revelation in the Bible. We are all persuaded in our minds that among the means of extending that light the Bibe itself has for centuries taken the foremost place. But, with man's proneness to distort or misuse even the grandest of God's gifts, this very privilege has had a peril of its own. People have forgotten, in the using of it, the manner in which the book, under the guiding hand of God, came to take the form in which we know it now, and have neglected the help thus given to us for understanding how to use without abusing it, how to accept it as both human and Divine. It is because men, it is because teachers in the Church of God, have forgotten this that half our perplexities about the Bible have arisen. I. The Bible and Science — ' Let there be light.' No man, I suppose, will admit, probably no man ever did admit, even to himself, that in these matters it is daylight that he fears. But has it not been true, nevertheless, and true of many of the best and most devout souls, as the Christian centuries have run their course, that — albeit unintentionally or unawares — they were setting themselves, however impotently, to thwart the Divine purpose, ' Let there be light ' ? What else can we say of the persistency with which — untaught by past experience — the guardians and champions of orthodox belief as based on Holy Scrip- ture have, times without number, on the authority of their own interpretation of the Bible, denounced as presumptuous or even blasphemous error the dis- coveries and aims of scientific men? It was on the strength of Biblical texts that the scheme of Christopher Columbus was condemned by the Spanish Junta in 1490 as vain and indefensible. In 1616 Galileo's teaching that the earth moves round the sun was formally censured by the consulting theo- logians of the Holy Office ' because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture '. A generation or two afterwards English students were warned by high authority against the investigations of so true and profound a Christian thinker as Sir Isaac Newton as being ' built on fallible phenomena and advanced by many arbi- trary presumptions against evident testimonies of Scripture '. And the lives of Roger Bacon, of Coper- nicus, of Kepler, and of many more, down even to our own day, and to incidents fresh in the recollection of many here, suggest to the thoughtful student of Holy Scripture the imperative need of a reverent and humble-minded caution in our attitude towards every controversy of the kind. We are not, indeed, required to accept at once every unproven hypothesis, or to mistake for absolute science mere assertions about that which is unknowable. Some of the votaries of science have had as little right to speak authoritatively and finally in the name of God. True science and true religion are twin sisters, each studying her own sacred Book of God, and nothing but disaster can arise from the petulant scorn of the one, or from the timidity or the tyrannies of the other. ' Let there Ver. 5. GENESIS Ver. 5. be light.' From the Father of light cometh every good and every perfect gift. II. The History and Character of the Bible. — And as with the scientific knowledge which has been so strangely supposed to be contradictory to Scripture rightly used and rightly understood, so, too — must we not say it to-day? — so, too, with every reverent and honest investigation into the history and the character of the sacred volume itself. ' Let there be light.' As regards the Old Testament, we have had access in these latter days, under the over-ruling Providence of God, to a wholly new range of facts about the dawn of civilization in the ancient nations of the world. Egypt and Assj-ria now vie with each other in their once undreamed-of contributions to the elucidation of our Sacred Book. And every fresh discovery, every new disinterment of significant tablet or cyinder or inscription from its resting-place of literally thou- sands of years, seems, to me at least, to do something more towards the strengthening and deepening of our belief in the genuine inspiration of the written Word of God, and in the distinctive glory of its divinely ordered message. We can give a new application to the Gospel sentence, ' If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead '. III. The Bible's Personal Appeal — 'Let there be light.' If it be true, as one sometimes fears it is, that there is less of the deliberate, prayerful, devo- tional study of the Word of God in our homes and on our knees than there used to be in England in days gone by, it is certainly true, I think, to say that there never was a time when so many people as now were bringing the whole power of trained intelligence and of cultured thoughtfulness to bear upon its every part. And that sustained effort cannot but be fruitful, can- not but react in its turn — and react healthfully for us and for our children — upon the other mode of Bible study, that mode which shapes itself in prayer. For this surely is unquestionable — he who sets himself in faith and hope to evoke from the Bible such secrets as it will disclose about the story of its structure and its growth will find himself, so to speak, forced to his knees by the very divineness of the message of guid- ance and of revelation which it will impart to his in- most soul. • References.— I. 3.— H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, A Year's Plain Sermons, p. 231. E. A. Askew, Sermons Preached in Greystokc Church, p. 59. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (1st series), p. 250. J. Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 293. F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 1. I. 4. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1252. H. J. Wilmot-Bux- ton, Sunday Lessons, vol. i. p. 171. NEW YEAR'S THOUGHTS ' The First Day.' — Genesis i. 5. A wonderful scene is conjured up in the story of creation, and it is not without significance that God's first work on the first day was the creation of light. All the great mass of material creation had been called into being, but thus far ' the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,' and then as the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, there came from Him Who dwelleth in the light that no man can approach unto, the irresistible mandate, ' Let there be light,' and there was light, and as the clouds rolled back and the darkness van- ished before the great stream of splendid light that came from God Himself, there appeared as the light streamed over nature strange forms of matter ranging themselves into order and beauty out of darkness, and gloom, and confusion, and chaos. May we not on this, the first day of a New Year, profitably consider some ' First Days ' and see what they have to teach us? I. The First Day of the Year. — Our thoughts natur- ally turn at once to New Year's Day when we keep the Feast of the Circumcision. God's gift to the world on the first day of creation was the wonderful gift of light, but on this day we think of a more wonderful gift still — the gift of His own Incarnate Son. When the time was come that one was found who was fitted by her purity and her obedience to become the mother of the Incarnate God, when she had said, ' Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word,' and in her humility and her faith, had re- signed herself to God ; and when in due course the Eternal Son of God was born of her in Bethlehem, then on the eighth day He was brought to His cir- cumcision, and then was obedient to the law for man, thus in His own person setting us that splendid ex- ample of the life of perfect obedience which alone is acceptable in the sight of God. II. The First Day of Creation God's gift to the world on creation's first day was, as I have already re- minded you, the gift of light. And this is His gift to you still. He gives you light, the light of conscience, the light of reason, the light of revelation, the light in the face of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God. HI. The First Day after the Flood ' After the rain had descended ... on the first day of the month the waters were dried up,' and Noah and his family came forth, having been preserved from the Flood. God's gift to you still is the gift of preservation. You have passed over the troublous waters of life dur- ing the past year in the ark of God's love and care. And now, as the New Year opens before you, He gives you a preserved life, new opportunities for doing His will stretch out before you. Remember this, remember it always, that the preserved life should be a dedi- cated life, a life dedicated to God with sacrifice. IV. The First Day of the Tabernacle.- God had brought His people out of Egypt; they had crossed the Red Sea ! they murmured at Marah, yet they were led on to Elim and afterwards to Mount Sinai, where they remained a year, during which they were taught His will, and then on the first day of the first month the Tabernacle was set up and ' the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle'. It was the manifested presence of Himself as the reward of the obedient worship according to His will. You have the same gift given to you this New Year's Day. Ver. 13. GENESIS I Ver. 26. V. The First Day of Judah's Repentance We pass on to the time of Hezekiah, who, deeply moved by all the misery and degradation that had come as the result of his father's evil reign, set himself heart and soul to the work of restoration. It was a great call to repentance; first to the whole nation, and then also a call which was extended to the nation of Israel, who, alas ! disregarded it. But Judah listened to the call, and we are told that ' on the first day of the first month they began to sanctify themselves '. VI. The First Day of Ezra's Return from Baby- Ion. — But Judah again fell away, and the seventy years' captivity in Babylon followed. Then came the return under Zerubbabel, the House of the Lord was rebuilt and worship was restored. Later there was another large return led by Ezra, whose very purpose was that he might seek the law of the Lord and teach it to the people, and we read that ' on the ■first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylon.' You know how he went up and how he worked. There shall yet be for us another first day, a day that shall never end, in which we shall possess these ' first day ' gifts in perfection, if only we strive our very best to use them aright now. Refebences. — I. 5. — Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, p. 327. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 660. AT THE QATES OF THE DAWN 'And the evening and the morning were the third day.' — Genesis i. 13. Six times these words are repeated, and the one lesson that rings out is that God counts His periods, not as man does from night to night, but from even- ing till morning. I. This is true of creation. At present a veil is cast over all peoples. The creature is subject to illusion, to incompleteness, or, as the Apostle says, to vanity. Probably no earthly realization, however good and beautiful, can set forth all that there is in God; and certainly human sin has infected the house of human life, as cholera and fever infect the tene- ments in which they have bred. The horror of dark- ness is the dower of the blind forces to which- some of our teachers attribute the system of ' things of which we form a part '. Creation shall participate in the glorious liberty of the sons of God. There shall be evening, there shall be morning, and a Seventh Day. II. So of the race. The evening was dark when the children of Babel gathered in rebellion against God, and when the knowledge of the original law seemed submerged in savagery and passion. It was destined to become still darker. Darkness was to cover the earth, and gross darkness the people. There have been many dark skies since then, but never so dark as before; and no thoughtful student of history can deny that things are slowly becoming better. III. So of the individual. Your life is dark. Sin is darkness; sorrow is darkness; and to a greater or | less extent these three are part of your daily lot. But the night is far spent, the day is at hand. The darkling waves, as they break around your boat, are bearing you onward to the morning meal upon the silver sands, where you will find love has gone before you with its preparation. It shall be evening and morning, and lo ! a day without night. — F. B. Meyer, Baptist Times and Freeman, vol. liv. p. 815. Refebences.— I. 14-15.— A. P. Stanely, Sermons on Spe- cial Occasions, p. 138. A DIVINE REVELATION (For Trinity Sunday) 'And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.' — Genesis i. 26. The word ' Trinity ' is derived from the Latin word Trinus, which signifies ' three-fold,' or ' three-in- one ' ; and thus it exactly expresses the profound mystery of three Persons in the unity of one God- head. To-day the Church most seasonably brings the doctrine of this mystery specially before us. I. It is distinctly a Divine Revelation It is absolute that this doctrine of the adorable Trinity be divinely revealed. And so it has been in various parts of Holy Scripture; but we confine our thought briefly to three instances. (a) Take the text first. — ' And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.' The word ' God ' is, in the original, in the plural number, and yet it- is connected with a singular verb. This is not an accidental violation of grammar ; for if we go through the whole Bible we shall find the same thing, that is, ' Elohim,' plural, used with a singular verb; but if we read the text thus, ' And the Three- in-One said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness,' all difficulty vanishes, and we at once agree with Jewish commentators and Christian divines that even on the first page of the Bible there is affirmed the great and precious truth of a Triune Jehovah. (6) But turn from the first page of the Old Testament to some of the first pages of the New, and this doctrine meets the eye again and in stronger form. ' And Jesus,' says St. Matthew, ' when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water; and lo! the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him. And lo ! a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.' Here are the three Divine Persons. And how beautifully and strictly in keeping with all this is the baptismal formula given by our Lord to His disciples just before He went back to His Father ! ' Go ye therefore,' said He to them, ' and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' Here again the doctrine of the Trinity is enunciated, and each Divine Person is not only linked in one Godhead, but put upon an equality with the other. And the like sublime things are found in the apostolic benediction. Thus the Bible asserts distinctly from beginning to 6 Ver. 27. GENESIS I Ver. 27. end that the Father is God; it asserts as distinctly that the Son is God ; and it asserts as distinctly that the Holy Ghost is God. II. It is the Emphatic Belief of the Church. — Take, as first proof, what is denominated ' the Apos- tles' Creed,' because it publishes the Deityship of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost in language that cannot possibly be mistaken. Take next what is named ' the Nicene Creed,' because it is, if anything, more emphatic than ' the Apostles' Creed,' especially in the third paragraph, having been composed by a council of holy fathers to define the perfect Christian faith in opposition to a contrary doctrine respecting the Holy Ghost. And then take what is called ' the Athanasian Creed,' because it is still more elaborate and precise than the two former creeds. In this creed it is affirmed that ' the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one, the Majesty co-eternal. And in this Trinity none is afore or after other; none is greater or less than another. So that in all things the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.' Refekences. — I. 26. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Master's Message, p. 183. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1491, p. 65. Bishop Woodford, Sermons Preached in Various Churches, p. 33. C. Kingsley, Oospet of the Pentateuch, p. 18. I. 26-31. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 9. I. 26-11. 3. — A.. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 1. ADAM THE CHILD 'And God created man.'— Genesis i. aj. The characteristic of they Jewish portraits is their derivation from the period of youth, and this chord is struck at the very beginning. I. The man who painted Adam knew he was paint- ing a child. Is his picture childlike enough to be universal? This artist has no pretence hand; his is the touch of a master. The Garden scene has never become absolute, and the reason is that it is planted in that field of humanity whose products neither grow nor decline. II. Why is this a representative picture? Because in the dawning consciousness of your own infant you will find exactly the same mixture of dust and divin- ity. But look again at the development of your child, and you will see how cosmopolitan is this biography of the primeval Adam. III. The common view is that the artist is describ- ing a case of mere disobedience. That is not the deepest idea of the picture. The primitive narration has attached itself, not to the portrayal of obedience, but to the portrayal of justice. It is not the de- pendant forgetting the respect to his master; it is the partner ignoring his contract, the associate break- ing his bond, the sharer of dual rights attempting to encroach upon the rights of the other. This child, every after child, has his tragedy inside, his dramatic personages inside, his dialogues inside. I do not think the tragedies would be less complete if the outward deed had been omitted; for the final act of injustice in the sight of heaven is ever consummated in the region of the soul. — G. Matheson, The Repre- sentative Men of the Bible, p. 23. THE ORIGIN AND THE DESTINY OF MAN ' God created man in His own image.' — Genesis i. 27. I. If we would profit by our own reading of the wonderful poem of Creation which is preserved for us in the first chapter of Genesis, we must fix our thoughts on the great spiritual truths which it teaches. Think of one of these truths, perhaps the most im- portant of all in relation to ourselves and our conduct. We may take it in the words of the text : ' God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him.' You may ask, no doubt, how this account of the Creation of man can be reconciled with the teaching of modern science as to his cousinship with the lower animals, teaching which we receive, perhaps, with a little natural reluctance when it is first put before us. But the truth is, that what the Bible is concerned with is not man's pedigree on the side of his humble ancestors, but his heritage and his birthright as made in the image of God. That as regards his bodily form man is akin to the lower animals may be very true. It is a matter with which Scripture does not concern itself. However life came it came from the one Source of Life. But that is not to say that man has no privilege of his own in which the beasts do not share. It is this prerogative of his, which the text puts before us. However man comes to his present stage of growth, there was given to him at some point in his long history a unique gift, the reason and the will which reflect the Supreme Reason, the Divine Will. And this gift is quite independent of those bodily appetites and desires which he shares with the brutes. It is independent, for personality is one thing, nature is another. And as it is not a product of the body, so it does not! perish with the body. II. What does that teach us about our Lord's Person? Is it not this, that though He became man, took upon Him human nature with all its joys and sorrows, His Divine Personality still continues. The forces which could sadden His human life, which brought about His bitter death, could not touch or destroy His Divine Person. III. And so, in a lower degree, indeed, and with many differences, may we say, that it is with man and his pedigree. He is an animal by nature ; his bodily life and death are as the life and death of the animals over which he rules. But then his personality; what of that ? Whence comes it ? From his animal nature ? Nay; but from God in whose image and likeness he is made. He is made after the Divine likeness in respect of his soul; and it is because we believe that, that we have a right to say that if the present is the life of beasts, it is the future which is the true life of man. — J. H. Bernard, Via Domini, p. 41. Ver. 27. GENESIS I Ver. 28. WHAT IS MAN? ' So God created man in His own image.' — Genesis i. 27. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man be- came a living soul.'— Genesis ii. 7. What are the great principles of religion which are revealed to us in these early chapters of Genesis? Speaking, generally, there are three. I. The Revelation of a Personal God. — The first is the revelation of a personal God Who made the world and rules all our life. In the Old Testament the writers never question the existence of God at all. God is there. What the Old Testament writers do give is the character and nature of that God Who is there from the beginning. Any conception of God which other religions may have must be brought to the test of the revelation of God which is made to us here. For instance, if you bring to the test the idea that man is swallowed up in God — that the finite is absorbed and lost in the infinite altogether — you find that that must be wrong, because it does not allow man that independence which the Bible narrative re- veals. Now we have here quite clearly marked the position of God. God is in the beginning, and this world's reality is through the Will of God. And you and I see that behind all the processes of Nature, whatever they may be, however long these processes may have taken, however strange may be the methods by which those processes have made the universe, it is God Who, behind all, is ruling. God is the begin- ning, God is the means, and God is the end. That is a practical matter, not merely one of intellectual de- delight. All that comes to us comes from the will, from the mind, from the heart of the living Person of God. II. The Revelation of Man's Privileges — Man has been made in the image of God. He stands quite apart from all the rest of the Creation. He has that power of self-consciousness which belongs to no other creature. His will is not like that of the animals, determined simply by the strongest physical passion or desire. In that lies this great fact : man is capable of union with God, he is capable of receiving a Divine revelation. Science itself is willing to acknowledge that there is this unearthly element in the nature of man. But as man has a higher side, so he has a lower side. God made man of the dust of the earth. There is the revelation of the material side of man's nature. What were the actual processes by which that material clay was prepared until it became ready for the breath of God ? It was God Himself Who guided those early developments till the clay was ready for the gift of self-consciousness. On the one side man is at one with Nature. At the same time man is raised distinctly above the animals by that breath of God. The long struggle continually leading us to fight for the higher ideal, the nobler life, is a constant witness to the Di- vine side of man. If we are made in the image of God, then we have the capacity to know God. III. The Revelation of Man's Fall. — Yet we know how man's life, as a matter of fact, falls far short of the ideal of the Divine life. We need that to be ex- plained, and in this early account of the Creation we have the explanation set clearly before us. There are very few references to the actual story of the fall, and yet all the while, especially after the captivity, there was a very strong sense of the gravity of sin. The Jews never looked back to a golden age, always to a golden age to come. When you look at the account of the fall and ask yourself, ' What does it really mean? ' you must try to realize quite clearly what is meant about the state of man before the fall. It is perfectly true that man did possess before the fall what he afterwards did not possess — a moral purity and innocence. But man did not possess what men have sometimes thought he possessed, such perfection as perfection of intellectual capacity — such a capacity, for instance, as man possesses to-day. Man was just a child. He was perfect in the sense that he perfectly corresponded with the Will of God. Man by his disobedience to the distinct Will of God introduced sin into the world. There came a moment when this disobedience broke down the development of man's life. Thus we see the need of redemption. References. — I. 27. — T. G. Bonney, Sermons on Ques- tions of the Day, p. 1. G. Sarson, A. Lent in London, p. 142. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 212. A. Gray, Faith and Diligence, p. 139. C. Brown, God and Man, p. 86. Bis- hop Jones, Old Testament Outlines, p. 4. Bishop Goodman, Parish Sermons, vol. v. p. 1. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Ser- mons, vol. iv. p. 35. QOD AND MAN ' Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.' — Genesis i. 28. There are many things which prove to be a puzzle to the brain of man, and if we try and think out first principles we often find ourselves tied up as it were in a knot. There are, however, three things in this world which the mind of man can reduce and think of as being, so to speak, first principles. Nobody can deny their existence. Here they are. We know of them, we see their working, they compose the whole of the created universe — matter, that which composes the whole of creation ; force, a technical term to represent the energy and power of the universe; and law, those wonderful results which we see following from differ- ent causes, and yet so regularly, that man is able to count upon them, to act upon them, and to frame the whole of his life from their results. Now these three things fail to account for three things concerning themselves. I. They Fail to Account for their Own Exist- ence.— You and I may study science, we may argue back, we may think out problems, we may arrive at some great conclusion, we may, indeed, understand all the mysteries of how and why, but as you get farther and farther back, you come to these three things, matter, force, and law, and there is no ingenuity of the brain of man that has yet been able to account for their existence. There is no explanation of them. You think yourself back to the far ages; you may adopt, if you like, the principle of development, evolu- 8 Ver. 81. GENESIS I Ver. 81. tion, of whatever you wish, but you come eventually back to these tilings, matter, force, law ; and no man's mind can, or has hitherto invented any system that will account for their being in existence. But when you open your Bible, when you turn to the first chapter of Genesis, there you find one explanation which has held good from the earliest time, and which has no refutation even to-day. In the very first chapter, in the very first verse, in the very first words, the one and only explanation is found, 'In the begin- ning God.' There is no other solution; there is no other explanation. II. Where is the Ingenuity of Man's Mind that can Conceive how these Things come to be in Action ? — It is all very well to produce and publish axioms which govern theories. It is all very well to test by the most accurate scientific knowledge and prove effects, but you have to go back to the final question: How they all became active, alive, so mag- nificently full of energy, force, and life as we see them? There is only one explanation; there is only one answer, and you find it still in the first chapter of Genesis, 'And God said . . . "Let there be" — ' III. How is it all the Things in the World that we see are Gradually Working Out and Promoting the Welfare of Mankind? — All that the world passes through, one phase after another, one form of life giving place to another form of life. You may go into the wilds of a distant country, or into the hub of the great civilized world, London, what do you find? That law, matter, force, in its natural result is all aid- ing the betterment of human beings. How do you account for this? We have no special physical force that would enable us to capture the world; we have no great magnificent power which enables us, as it were, to rule the forces of Nature in ourselves, except that we find, as we look round the world, in all the created things of life, they all turn, they all develop, they are all capable of being made for the promotion of the welfare of mankind. This, I think, you will find answered in the same first chapter of Genesis, for in the twenty-ninth verse, God has there said : 'I have given you all the earth'. Here you have matter, force, and law; here you have them failing to account for their own existence and failing to account for their being in action, and the mysterious fact that it all works out in its results for promoting the welfare of human beings. It is one of the most wonderful thoughts that a man can have: God has created, God has said, God has given. THE MANIFOLD MERCIES OF GOD 'And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.' — Genesis I. 31. The pessimist view of the Creation, nay, of man him- self, of life, of all things, is now in the ascendant. I mean by the pessimist view, the view which tends to depreciate both man and his world. The wise ones of the hour, happily only of the hour, who lead the thoughts of this generation, and are listened to as its prophets, seem to be settling to the cheerful convic- tion that Creation has on the whole been a blunder, of which all sentient things have to suffer the penalty in the pain and futility which torment the world. I. I believe that this pessimist view of man and the creation is just the reaction — the inevitable reaction — against that foolishly and wearisomely optimist view which, during the last generations, the writers on Christian evidences have dinned into the ears of men. The intellectual world is just weary to nausea- tion of hearing that all things in the universe work together with the smoothness and constancy of a machine, whose steam power the Being whom they are pleased to call the great Artificer supplied. The curse of our theology during the last century has been this, that owing mainly to the vigour of the Deistic and Atheistic assault on the truth of the Gospel, theologians have been tempted to think that they had to make out a case for God, and to hold the citadel of their narrow theology as a Divine fortress, which they were bound to defend at any cost. They have effected a complete understanding of the scheme of the universe ; have explained away or hidden all that seemed inconsistent with the benignity of the Creator, and pushed forward and magnified all that fell in with their notions of His goodness, until their Creation — the Creation which they undertook to explain and to justify, whose de- sign they were ever ready to expound, and whose plan fitted their expositions as a key fits its wards — had come to be a very unreal and unlifelike world. When we hear from our wise ones in the lore of nature that there is more pain than joy within the range of their sight, we remind ourselves that Scrip- ture told us it was a travail. When they tell us that it seems to be but a blundering and futile scheme, we remind ourselves again that the Scripture tells us that it is a seed time, and what can seem so blundering and futile as casting seed into the furrows to rot under the dull pall of winter, to him who has no eye to forecast the radiance of the coming spring. II. The grand distinctive feature of the Creation, that which reveals the loving-kindness of the Creator, and is the signature of His goodness, is the law of progress which rules its development; the continued evolution of finer, compacter, purer, nobler forms of things, as the unfolding of the purpose of the Creator proceeds, so that the world of to-day is altogether a more beautiful, orderly, and joyful world to live in, than the world, as far as we can discern its features, of myriads of years ago. There is struggle, shock, and apparent confusion without question. The world of to-day seems built on the ruins of the world of yesterday. The feet of the living tread everywhere the dust of death. But the living now stand higher than the living of old — with more erect port, with freer gesture, with braver dress. Something in the inner soul of nature moves her to this continual refining and elevating of form. We cannot be blind to the manifest hand of the living God. It is the course of development which from the 9 Ver. 2. GENESIS II Ver. 2. first He prophesied. As we see it complete itself we cannot help connecting it with the unseen Almighty hand. There has been through all the ages that law of progress working mightily, which is announced as the law of the Divine operation in the Scripture. All things there breathe the spirit of progress, of vital propulsive movement, of onward, upward develop- ment ; progress, the onward, upward movement, is the breath of their life. It is with Creation as with history. God prophesies, not that we may be able to paint in detail the scheme of the future, but that when we see it unfold itself we may know that it is His work (Isaiah xlv. 18-25). III. There is that in the Creation which the largest and most developed human intellect and spirit, albeit conversant with heavenly things, and familiar with the thoughts of God, contemplates with eager and keen delight, which seems to transcend its power of comprehension and its organ of expression, which bends it low in something like awestruck adoration, while it murmurs, ' O Lord, my God, how wonderful are Thy works, how glorious! In wisdom and in faithfulness hast Thou made them all.' — J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi. p. 841. References. — I. 31. — T. G. Bonney, Sermons on Ques- tions of the Day, p. 17. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 268. E. T. A. Morriner, Sermons Preached at Lyme Regis, p. 185. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 238. II. — G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons, p. 61. II. 1-3. — J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 19. J. Parker, Adams, Noah, and Abra- ham, p. 14. THE CREATOR EXPLAINED BY THE CREATION ' God ended His work which He had made. — Genesis ii. 2. Given the Creation, to find the Creator, at least to conjecture about Him. Given the house, to discover something about the builder of it, or the owner or the occupant. It is a large house; very well, then the man behind it, who made it, or is responsible for it, must be a man of some substance and property. It is an artistically furnished house; every piece of furniture has been set down by the hands of love just in the right place and in the right light and in the right relation to every other piece: then the man who made all this arrangement must, of necessity, have the mind, the instinct, or the training of an artist. No house ever made itself, therefore I think the heavens and the earth cannot have made themselves ; no candle ever lighted its own wick, therefore I should be surprised if the stars were their own lamplighters. I. I begin to feel that if any man suggested to me that all this creation-house was built by an Infinite Power and an Infinite Intelligence, I should believe him. In very deed it seems like it; all the pieces are so vast ; arithmetic endeavoured to calculate their distances, and having written an endless bine of ciphers, it threw down the chalk and ran away, be- cause it could not express in words its own discoveries. God is as great in detail as He is in the totality and massiveness of things. I read in the first chapter of the book of Genesis a most astounding thing: that God said ' Let there be bight,' and He made the grass, and there is no sense of anticlimax or retro- cession in the action of Divine power. God is fur- nishing a house for some one, and He will not leave that some one to find the grass ; if God undertakes to furnish a place it will be well furnished and com- pletely furnished, and not only will there be great lights and great spaces, but man will not be asked to create one blade of grass, it shall all be done for him. II. God came nearer still to us in the work which He made and which He ended. He incarnated Him- self, He infleshed Himself, He embodied Himself. There stands the incarnation! What is his name? Adam — ' God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God created He him '. That is the daring solution of the great problem of human existence as given by the Bible. III. In all the work which He wrought did He ever speak? He spake all the time. Sometimes I think there is a sound as of subdued singing, a sup- pressed psalm running throusrh all the action of the Creation. 'God said' — then He spake? Yes; all things start in the word. Did not man make words? No; all the words were made before man came upon the scene at all. They were such great words that the first Speaker used in the making of His heaven- and-earth house. God not only said, God blessed; so to say, He laid His gracious right hand upon the things and said to each, Very good; take thy place, work out the purpose which I have written in the psalm of thine heart. God not only said, and blessed, God called: gave names to things, gave names to great spaces and left some little small pieces of things which we might name, but all the great broad names, names of comprehension, names that grasp the total- ity and the destiny of things, He Himself made. IV. We are invited, by a meditation like this not to go into eternity, the metaphysical and unthinkable eternity, to find God ; we are invited to stand before the first molehill, before the first time-written rock that tells its tale in facial moss; we are invited to go out into the twilight and to ask, Who did this, who built this, who keeps this in order, who guaran- tees that these planets will not fall on this head? Surely the argument upon which the Christian faith is built is eminently reasonable, it is an argument which we apply along the whole line of our experi- ence; then when we come into the deeper mysteries, the great spiritual verities, we are prepared to enter the holy of holies just in the degree in which we have carefully, intelligently, and lovingly walked along the line of what may be called natural creation and natural phenomena. If we have been reverent along that line we shall hear greater mysteries still. We are asked in the New Testament to believe that God redeemed man. In very deed redemption is implied in creation. Never forget that words have not only a superficial meaning but an implied mean- ing, an enfolded and concealed meaning, which must 10 Ver. 7. GENESIS II Ver. 7. be taken out and allowed to develop in all the fulness of their beauty and poetry. So read, created means redeemed, as the beginning means the end. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 3. References. — II. 3. — F. Corbett, Preachers' Year, p. 41. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, p. 18. II. 4.— F. W. Robertson, Holes on Oenesisr p. 16. ' And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul.'— Genesis ii. 7. When? If you look in the margin of your Bible you will see ' 4004 years before Christ '. Is that right? It is no part of the original book. It is only a marginal note which was made there by those who calculated according to the genealogies of those men who, generation by generation, succeeded Adam. But it will not do. I. Age by Age. — We read this morning of the Creation of the world. We read to-night a con- tinuation of the story and of that time when the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground. Have we here in this book of Genesis an account of seven actual days of twenty- four hours ? ' And the evening and the morning were the first day,' ' and the evening and the morning were the second day,' and so on. Surely not. What is it that science has revealed to us about all this? It has revealed to us that the Creation as we now hold it must have taken something like 4000 million years at least. God works very slowly, and when we read of God working day by day we know that he who wrote these words meant ' age by age'. ' And the evening and the morning were the first day.' Why, the very ex- pression suggests to us the length of time — the long night — of God's creation. From the little to the greater; from the twilight to the dawn. Thus God worked. It is very important that we should re- member this : otherwise we should be so staggered in the matter of our religion; otherwise we should find ourselves face to face with such tremendous difficulties. Science has revealed so much to us that we did not know when man wrote in the margin ' 4004 years'. II. The Identity of Science and the Bible. — How has God been working then? Science teaches us so much, and if we do not believe science we shall be- come very unsettled in our minds, and we shall say to ourselves, What about this book? is it true? can it be trusted? And then we recall to mind that our Lord Jesus Christ took this book for true and quoted from it, and we shall say to ourselves, Was He too mistaken? But we must not do that. Whatever science teaches us accurately and fairly we must face, and we need never be afraid if we do so that the truth of science will clash with God's holy word. What is it we really find in this book of Genesis ? We find most accurate scientific language. We find the one who writes this book to say that through long ages God created a world, and we find that He first created that which is inorganic — to speak popu- ' larly the earth — next vegetable life, then animal life, then man's life. And that is just what science says was done. If you can read and understand the Hebrew you will find four words used to express this creation by God. The first is to form, and the next is to breathe into, and the next is to make, and the last is to create. And this is actually scientific lan- guage. But between the first and the second and the third and the fourth science finds gaps. Science has no means of explaining how the step was made from one to the other — how it was from earth to vegetable life, from vegetable to animal life with its consciousness, how from animal life with its conscious- ness came man with his intellectual powers and, as most scientists admit, with his spiritual being. To us as believers in the one true God, to us as Christians, the followers of the Holy One the Son of God, it comes quite simply. God worked through the long ages, beginning at inorganic matter, then by His creating power gave life which made the vegetable, then by His creating power breathed into that life that which made the animal life with its conscious- ness, and then created the spiritual being of man. Through the long, long ages man, if you will, was evolved by the power of God. Why, it is scriptural language! 'The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground.' Then what does it matter to us if scientific men find fossil remains of man which must have been in existence long ages before the 4004 years ago mentioned in the margin? We ex- pect them to find that. So God has been working, so God has been evolving, if you will from the dust of the ground by His almighty power the creature who now is man. III. Man's Relation to God You are not a bit of earth, you are not a vegetable, you are not merely an animal conscious of your being — you are a man created by God, you are the outcome of God's almighty working, God has breathed into you the breath of life and you have become a living soul. You are eternal, a son of God created in God's image and having spiritual powers. Oh, it is a wonderful ancestry! Oh, it is a wonderful dignity to have arrived at by the power of God ! Are we living as if only earth? Are we living only as vegetables in this world ? Are we living only as animals, conscious of animal pleasure or animal pain? Or are we living as we may live — as sons of God, conscious, living, real — the children of God in whom is eternity? LITTLE SOULS ' The Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul.' — Genesis ii. 7. I. Little Souls. We hear people spoken of as good souls, poor souls, and the like, let us think now of those who may be called little souls. It was the custom in old-fashioned gardens to cut back the shrubs and trees, which were intended by Nature to grow large and luxuriant, till they became stunted and dwarfed, even grotesque. People treat their souls in the same way. They do not let them grow as God plans, but keep cutting them back, as 11 Ver. 12. GENESIS II Ver. 12. it were. There is no development, no growth, and therefore no beauty in their lives ; they have merely stunted souls. God intends our souls to grow and develop as our body does. A Christian is meant to grow, to advance. His watchwords are, go up higher, excelsior, amplius, higher, wider, till we come to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of Christ. II. Marks of a Little Soul. — 1. People with little souls take narrow views of religion. 2. Small souled people take narrow views of duty. 3. People with little souls are wanting in sympathy. III. The Duty of Taking a Wider View Let us try to take a wider view of things, of life, of religion, of duty, of our responsibilities. Let us cultivate a wider sympathy with others' needs, instead of sitting down upon our own little bundle of thorns. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Notes of Sermons for the Year, pp. 114-20. 'Man became a living soul.' — Genesis ii. 7. The nature of man was that in which God was at last to give His crowning revelation, and for that no preparation could seem extravagant. Fascinating and full of marvel as is the history of the past which science discloses to us ; full as these slow-moving millions of years are in evidences of the exhaustless wealth of nature, and mysterious as the delay appears, all that expenditure of resources is eclipsed, and all the delay justified when the whole work is crowned by the Incarnation, for in it we see that all that slow process was the preparation of a nature in which God could manifest Himself as a Person to persons. — Marcus Dods. References. — II. 7. — J. Keble, Sermons for Septua- gesima, p. 108. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 40; Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii. p. 108. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons, p. 250. J. Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man, p. 48. It. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons, p. 293. II. 8. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Bible Object Lessons, p. 203. C. Perren, Revival Sermons, p. 301. W. L. Watkinson, The Blind Spot, p. 183. R. Fetherston, A Garden Eastward, p. 1. II. 9. — J. Keble, Sermons for the Holy Week, p. 446. A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 283. II. 12. — W. L. Watkinson, The Ashes of Roses, p. 1G5. II. 15. — R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, p. 265. QOLD AND ONYX NOT ENOUGH 'And the gold of that land is good : there is bdellium and the onyx stone. — Genesis ii. 12. Gold and bdellium and onyx — what more did it need ? Is not this a sufficing inventory of the land? It needed a river. Land without river is sand, nothing- ness,a great ghastly image of fruitlessness and despair. But if it have gold and bdellium and onyx, is it not fruitful? No; no more is your life. You have gold and gum and grey onyx and precious stones, but no river ; write yourself poor, make out yourself a bank- rupt in the court of heaven. You may use this metaphor of the river in many senses. The emblems of God are capable of being broken up into various aspects and driven along various lines of practical application. The metaphor is not confined to water only; there are other things that may stand for water in the elaboration of this great argument. I. Here is a man who has great capacity. He is a man of insight and foresight, he balances things well, his judgments are sound, his talents are somewhat even brilliant. Then why does he not succeed in life? For want of the river. What is that river? Capital. He is abler than many, full of resource, very quick in sight and very sure in calculation, but you might as well attempt to sail a great American liner in a basinful of water as to carry forward all the possibilities of his talent when he is in want of capital, gold, and bdellium and onyx. The Divine grace utilizes all our powers, gives them scope, causes them to grow, satisfies their aspirations, ennobles their uses, and we may have everything but the wealth of God, the wealth of grace, the wealth of character, ability enough, even splendour of intellect enough, but no river of grace, no river of the true gold, no river of spiritual capital. What, then, does it all mean? Ruin. There is no way for splendour to find its road into heaven. II. Here is a man who has capital, gold, and bdel- lium and onyx, and his balances pecuniary are so great that he hardly cares to count them; and yet he is to be pitied. Why so? Want of the river. What river? Health! Health turns stones into gold, de- serts into gardens; health creates stars for the mid- night, and revels in the splendour of the planets; health is a continual miracle, health clears a way for itself; and the man who is being pictured by my fancy at this moment has everything but health. If God would send that Pison, that stream, that member of the great fourfold Eden river into his life, the man would stand up a king. III. Here is a very remarkable life: the man has learning and great intellectual capacity and many attributes that other men might covet or envy ; and yet, oh how dismal is that life! What does it want? The river. What river? Sunshine, the light- river. IV. And another figure which comes to my fancy is that of a man in sore loneliness. He could do much under given circumstances, but under the circum- stances which now crush him he can do nothing. What does he want? The river. What river? The river of a strong friend. Some of us were nothing till the strong friend got hold of us, and then we expanded into something, and were accounted of re- pute and influence. There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother, there is a Friend accessible to all, the name, unchangeable, is Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Jews murdered, but whom God offered up in sacrifice: He is the Friend of all. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. i. p. 09. 12 Vv. 16, 17. GENESIS II Ver. 18. THE STANDARD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ' And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shah not eat, for in the day that thou eatest thou shalt surely die.' — Genesis n. 16, 17. *Sin is the transgression of the law.' Before we can understand the consequences of sin we must try to understand the nature of the law. If religious fatal- ism is dead, scientific fatalism does not lack its prophets. We are told that environment is every- thing. You cannot choose what you will think, or say, or do. There is no will in man to master the sovereign impulses of Nature. , I. The first point that strikes us is that if this is true the whole government of the world is a mon- strous injustice. If there is no vice to be punished it is nothing short of a scandal that punishment should be inflicted. The fact of the matter is that the theory breaks down before the actual conscious- ness of men. The moral nature of man is a special communication of God. II. We have reached the point where the problem of revelation begins to face us. If it is true, as we feel, that we can obey or disobey the will of God, what is that will? How has it been revealed to man? The education of the conscience is a great historical process. In this second chapter of Genesis, and indeed throughout the whole Bible, revelation is represented as being of two kinds — inward and out- ward. In the very spirit and nature of a man made in the likeness of God there is a certain elementary revelation of the will of God. There are in every conscience certain broad lines of right and wrong. To walk as we are sometimes encouraged to do by the light of nature, as if that were enough, is simply to count degeneration and decay. The spirit life needs, like every other life, to be kept alive by a friendly spiritual environment. To live in God, to absorb His quickening, vitalizing power, to hearken to His commandment, and be refreshed and strength- ened by His grace — these are no fables of Scripture but living experiences of men. Revelation is from without as well as from within. III. Commandment without example, without illus- tration, is morally of very little effect. ' How can you define in words where legitimate indulgence ends and where positive vice begins? What is lawful for me may not be expedient because of my brother.' Ages ago in response to human need the Ten Command- ments were given. The Ten Commandments grew into a whole system and government of life. The Rabbis said 'thus and thus you should live.' But yet they could not teach the world in words the will of God. IV. God has explained and defined. But the mind of man could not comprehend. There remained one way and only one. It was that God Himself should take in hand the task of life, and live it out before the world. He is the end and crown of revelation. — C. Silvester Horne, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxix. p. 78. Reference.— II. 16-17. — A. W. Momerie, The Origin of Evil, p. 1. SATAN IN HISTORY 'And the Lord God said . . .' — Genesis ii. 18. ' And the serpent said . . .' — Genesis hi. 4. And between these two voices the education and dis- cipline of man have been conducted from the first day until now. Never let us shut our eyes to facts. There is a temptation to avoid unpleasant subjects; such temptation is one of the devil's tricks. I. 'And the Lord God said . . .' 'And the serpent said . . .,' and they both spoke practically on the first page of the first book in the Bible; the devil was nearly as instantaneously present as was God. 'And God said . . .' 'And the serpent said . . ./ and sometimes they are blended and interblended, and you can hardly discriminate between one tone and the other. If I look abroad upon the earth so far as it is ac- cessible to my observation, I cannot but find proofs enough that there is an enemy, call him by what name you please, account for him as you like, deny him if you will ; I can not account for certain broad facts, events, collisions, tragedies, woes, losses, apart from the suggestion that there is an unslumbering enemy; I cannot trace everything to a good parent. I am not able yet to say that all things are pure, sweet, beneficent, healing, and full of blessedness. On the contrary, I can say, There is an enemy here, or there, or yonder; God never dug a grave, God never inflicted pain; there must be behind all the pain which He inflicts a reason or a suggestion which re- fers to some other and alien and antagonistic and most cruel force. II. It is wonderful how the Bible from beginning to end, from almost the first page to the last, broadly, definitely, recognizes the personality and ministry of an evil one. The slime of the serpent is upon every page, his fang thrusts itself through all the rose leaves and summer beauty of life and time. Until we get back to fundamental facts we cannot preach the Gospel ; in fact, we shall have no Gospel to preach. It was not until 'the serpent said' that another voice replied, 'The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent'. The serpent speech is the first page, the first sentence, in the Christian theology. III. Now as visibly in the one case as in the other there is certainly a good spirit abroad, a holy redeem- ing spirit, a gentle, tender, sympathizing spirit, a benign power that will not leave us until the red wound has been skinned over and until that skin has grown into a sufficient and permanent security. The Bible does not create God ; I see God in providence, I see Him in my own life, I see Him in the family life of all my friends ; He wants time for the develop- ment of His personality and the full revelation of His design and the complete outlining and outspher- ing of His beneficent purpose. (1) Remember that the power of the serpent is limited. He is chained, he cannot add one link to his chain ; he cannot stretch it, it is not an elastic chain, it is inflexible. 13 Ver. 23. GENESIS II Ver. 23. (2) And the ministry of the evil one is educational if properly received. It teaches us what we are, what we may become, it teaches us our need of re- deeming love, it teaches us the vanity of love, the transitoriness of the things upon which we lavish our affection. (3) And the power of the devil is revelatory. It will help us to understand the larger and fuller side of things ; it will help us to account for some things which otherwise would distress our faith. Satan can only do a certain amount of mischief; the amount of mischief shall return upon his own head ; and one day, far off, we shall see how it was that without knowing it the enemy was one of our friends. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 21. References. — II. 18. — G. Bainton, Christian World Pul- pit, vol. xxxviii. p. 163. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (1st series), p. 250. C. J. Ridgeway, The King and His Kingdom, p. 20. II. 21, 24. — Archbishop Bourne, Sermons in West- minster Abbey, p. 96. II. 22. — J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 344. S. Leathes, Studies in Genesis, p. 31. EVE THE UNFOLDED 4 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.' — Genesis ii. 23. The second chapter of Genesis is an attempt to paint not the making but the marriage of woman. It is an effort to delineate the day not of her birth but of her emergence. There are three periods indicated in the development of this primitive woman — a period of innocence or unconsciousness, a period of conscious expansion, and a period of conscious or voluntary self-repression. The picture of Eve is an unfolding of these stages. She begins, so to speak, under- ground. She is at first invisible in the garden. It is her period of unconsciousness, of spontaneity, of existence that has never seen itself in the mirror nor stood before the bar of its own judgment-seat. The second period of female development. Eve has become the mistress of Adam's ground. Spon- taneity is dead, artlessness is dead, simplicity is dead. It is she and not Adam that wakens first to the glories of the garden. The first conviction of being beautiful may impart to her a thrill of awe. Her gifts have ordained her to a ministry that must ren- der her less and not more free. But there is another way in which the woman may be affected by her looking-glass pride. It is this latter experience and not the former which is the case of Eve. The charm of her new-found possession dazzled her. Her satis- faction has its root in unblushing egotism. She is tempted by the offer of wisdom to be a God. The temptation of the woman in Eden is not a temptation to disobey, but a temptation to get possession of something which can only be got through disobedi- ence. What is this sin of the woman — extrava- gance. The third stage — conscious contraction. The typical woman of the world generally settles down. The scene of her empire narrows. It is not a stoop- ing of her pride. It is the taking pride in something new, something nobler. There has come to Eve — motherhood. — G. Matheson, Representative Women of the Bible, p. 29. THE FALL Genesis hi. Moral evil cannot be accounted for by referring it to a brute source. Vitally important truths underlie the narrative and are bodied forth by it. But the way to reach these truths is not to adhere too rigidly to the literal meaning, but to catch the general impression. I. Variety of interpretation in details is not to be lamented. The very purpose of such representations as are here given is to suit all stages of mental and physical advancement. II. The most significant elements in man's primitive condition are represented by the two trees of the garden. (a) The tree of life, the fruit of which bestowed immortality. Man was therefore naturally mortal, though apparently with a capacity for immortality. The mystical nature of the tree of life is recognized in the New Testament by our Lord, and by John when he describes the New Jerusalem. Both these representations are intended to convey in a striking and pictorial form the promise of life everlasting. (6) The trial of man's obedience is imaged in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the child-like innocence in which man originally was, he was to pass forward into the condition of moral manhood. Temptation comes like a serpent. III. Temptation succeeds at first by exciting our curiosity. This dangerous craving has many elements in it. (a) The instinctive drawing towards what is mys- terious. (b) The sense of incompleteness. Few boys wish to be always boys. IV. Through craving for a large experience un- belief in God's goodness finds entrance. In the presence of forbidden pleasure we are tempted to feel as if God were grudging us enjoyment. The very arguments of the serpent occur to our mind. V. If we know our own history we cannot be surprised to read that one taste of evil ruined our first parents. The actual experience of sin is like the one taste of alcohol to a reclaimed drunkard. VI. The first result of sin is shame. The form in which the knowledge of good and evil comes to us is the knowing we are naked. VII. When Adam found he was no longer fit for God's eye, God provided a covering which might enable him again to live in His presence without dis- may. Man had exhausted his own ingenuity and resources, and exhausted them without finding relief to his shame. If his shame was to be effectually removed, God must do it. — Marcus Dods, The Book of Genesis, p. 15. 14 GENESIS III Ver. 1. THE FIRST TEMPTATION OF MAN Genesis hi. Let us consider the great First Temptation of Man, the story of Genesis in. I shall not attempt to dis- cuss the deep question how far we are to take every detail of that chapter literally. It is no mere 'al- legory'. It puts before us an awful fact; I am sure of this. But the first few pages of Scripture, in the nature of their subjects, are so mysterious that we may well hold our peace when the question is asked, Is every word to be taken literally? Do these chapters tell us their story in the same style of detail as that in which we are told, for example, the ship- wreck of St. Paul? Is it not at least possible that, as the last pages of the Bible tell us of a glorious and blissful future in terms of symbol and figure, so the first pages of the Bible tell us in the same style of a mysterious past? Gates of pearl and streets of gold are assuredly to be understood as symbols of 'the glory to be revealed'. The same may be true of many a phrase used to depict the 'glory' of man's first estate, and his fall from it. But I say all this by the way. Here is the picture before us. We are called to study the fact of the First Temptation, in the terms given us in the Word of God. What do we see, then, in the mystery so revealed to us? I. First, we see that man was, from the beginning, in the wisdom of God, placed under a gentle but real test by his heavenly Friend, and permitted, through it, to be enticed by his enemy. His obedience was tested by a firm while mild prohibition. His will was enticed into revolt by a misrepresentation of the mind of Him who had forbidden him 'the fruit'. A thousand varieties of temptation can be grouped in one class in the light of that fact. II. Then, the First Temptation is one in which the evil power approached man through what, in it- self, was purely good. What can be fairer to thought than the fruit of a tree in the Garden of God? No poison could lurk in that 'fruit' itself. The only evil lay in the fact that, for purposes of Divine love, and perhaps only for a season, even so, its use was forbidden. The thing was good, the pure creation of the all-perfect Maker. But His command, 'Thou shalt not eat,' made the using of it evil. III. Have we not here again a type of whole worlds of temptation? In countless cases the thing through which the temptation comes from beneath is a thing whose origin is from above, yea, from the Father of Lights, the Giver of every good and perfect gift. It is something beautiful and pure in itself, and the use of which, under other conditions, or at other times, may be as right as it is delightful. But some high reason says to us, just now, in view of that particular tree of God's own garden of pleasures, 'Do not eat'. Just now, just for us now, that charming object, that interesting occupation, that sweet society, that pleasant place is, in the Lord's wise love, to be foregone. We are asked to 'do without it; to be 'as a weaned child' about it. No condemnation is passed upon it. But our use of it would be against His will. And that makes it a test in the hands of our Friend, and an enticement in the hands of our enemy. We are at once tested and enticed by a conflict of pleasure with duty, where the pleasure in itself is pure. IV. Then, we see, in the First Temptation, the very method and manner of the enemy's use of good for ends of evil. Through man's thought about 'the fruit' he aims a subtle thrust with a poisoned dagger at man's thought about God. He suggests that God is not love. He whispers that God withholds the fruit for selfish reasons ; that He does not want man . to be as happy as possible, to be too near Himself, to be too much like Himself. So, by that poisoned wound, the root of all sin is left in man. For sin, in its last analysis, is a discord between man and the blessed God. And we are at discord with His great love, not only when we openly defy His will, but when we suspect it, when we distrust it. That is, 'the little rift within the lute,' which has in it the possible discords of all imaginable actual sinning. When the primeval human heart first listened to that dreadful suggestion, that God would say one word to His beloved creature, made in His image, which was not a word of love, then man sinned, then man fell. And the nature which so fell has felt the shock of its fall ever since; it has kept the discord ever since ; so that only the hand of the slandered God of Love can set it right, taking away from it this fatal mischief of distrust of Him, putting into its hand 'the shield of faith, of trust in Him, where- with it shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.' — Bishop H. C. G. Moule. References. — III. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2299 ; ibid. vol. 1. No. 2900. SATAN'S WILES 'And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said.' — Genesis iii. i. The first words which Satan is ever recorded to have spoken must be words of interest, if it be only that they may serve as a key to unlock some of his later subtleties. And I observe at once a remarkable similarity between all the beginnings of Satan's words. I hear him coming to the first Adam — 'Yea, hath God said ? ' then I listen to him approaching the second Adam — 'If thou be the Son of God'. And there is one feature characterizing both. He begins with laying a doubt at the root. He questions; he un- settles. He does not assert error: he does not contra- dict truth ; but he confounds both. He sets the mind at cavilling. He leaves a worm to gnaw at the core; and then he goes his way. Just so I observe his deal- ing when he speaks to God about Job. He opens his mouth with a question — 'Does Job fear God for nought ? ' So I at once take this general inference — that Satan makes his first entries — not by violent attack, but by secret sapping; and that he endeavors to confuse and 15 Vv. 1-5. GENESIS III Vv. 1-15. cloud the mind which he is afterwards going to kill in the dark. I. Take the experience of a believer, and take the facts recorded in Satan's history, and it is evident in the outset that these questionings of the mind are always to be taken as Satan's temptations. The his- tory of paradise will be sufficient to show this. The more you can resist these doubts as temptations, and bring to bear upon them your defensive armour, as you do in any moral temptation, and especially the more you throw them off as not your own, and give them back again, the sooner will be the victory; and the sooner the trial will pass away. II. With all Satan's views, his far end is to diminish from the glory of God. You are wrong, if you think his far end is to destroy your soul: you are wrong, if you think his far end is to destroy the universe of souls. He takes these but as a means to his highest amibitious end: his final object is to derogate some- thing from the Majesty of God. Against God Is his spleen directed ; therefore, to mar God's design, he insinuated his wily coil into the garden of Eden; to mar God's design, he met Jesus Christ in the wilder- ness, on the mountain top, and on the pinnacle of the temple; to mar God's design, he is always leading us to take unworthy views of God's nature and God's work. III. It is Satan's delight to make limitations — draw boundary lines around grace. There is not a beauti- ful doctrine, but he will try to diminish it, and draw out of it, if he can, a proof of a limited gospel. He is always saying — ' It is not for everybody : it is not for all persons: but it is for "the elect" '. 'It is not in everything; it does not go down into little parti- culars.' And so he tries to make the very mind of the child of God, which ought to be standing out in perfect liberty, wherewith Christ hath made it free, to be bound in the prison house. He detracts from the largeness of God's love; he will not hold the grandeur of universal love ; he will not hold particular election: he hates both — because both glorify God. Particular election, showing particular love, universal redemption, the vastness of his compassion: therefore both he would put away. Satan is always disparag- ing or impugning universal redemption or individual election. IV. For all these confining, limiting views there is but one remedy — it is to look at the character of God, as He is revealed in the covenant of His grace. You will observe that this is exactly what our Saviour did. When He was tempted, He threw Himself and Satan back upon 'what is written'. — J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (1874), p. 172. THE TEMPTATION IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 'And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the Garden.' etc. — Genesis hi. 1-5. How did the Tempter effect his purpose? I. By a question. (a) On the serpent-lips of the tempter it meant this:— 'May you not settle for yourself what is morally right and what is morally wrong, instead of obeying the eternal law of right? May you not feel your- self at liberty to disobey a command given you by God?' (6) Mark the subtlety of the question. God gave His gifts largely, and placed on human freedom but one limitation. But the tempter hides the love, and aggravates the burden of the prohibition. (c) How did Eve meet the question? Exactly as you and I have met the same question when we have been tempted to indulge in some unlawful gratifica- tion. Do we not all listen as Eve listened, doubt as she doubted, have hard thoughts of God as she had, put a barrier where God has put none, and break down defence where He has fixed it, and so place our- selves at the tempter's mercy? II. He makes the way to sin easy by removing all fear of the consequences. There is the negation, 'ye shall not surely die.' III. But the seductive power could not stop there. Man cannot live by doubt and by negation. Hence the Satanic doubt and the Satanic negation are followed by the Satanic promise. (a) Note the malevolence of these words, 'God doth know'. Is there not a marvellous consistency in the story which puts that suggestion into the serpent's mind? (o) See the fascination of the promise: 'Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil'. Addressed to that which was noblest in man- — the largeness of his capa- city, the grandeur of his aims, the infinite within him. It was fascinating then to unsuspecting innocence, it is fascinating still to us in our fallen condition, most fascinating to those to whom God has given large intellect and large hearts if they have not found Him. IV. Man has fallen through the tempter's art, but man has also triumphed over the tempter. Christ reversed the fall of man ; thus did He give our nature its true exaltation and raise it to the right hand of power. — J. J. S. Perowne, The Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v. p. 119. BEGINNING OF SIN AND REDEMPTION Genesis hi. 1-15. 'The Fall,' says Dr. Cunningham Geikie, 'finds an echo in every religion in the world.' In the Thibetan story the first men were perfect like the gods ; but they ate of the white sugar-sweet tree, and grew corrupt. In the oldest Hindoo temples two figures of Krishna are still seen, in one of which he is tramp- ling on the crushed head of a serpent. In the museum of the Capitol there is an old sarcophagus which shows a naked man and woman standing beneath a tree from which the man is about to pluck fruit. The demon who tempts him is standing near. There are no such thorns found in a state of nature, says Dr. Hugh Macmillan, as those produced by ground once tilled by man. In the waste clearings of New Zealand and Canada, and around the ruined 16 Ver. 4. GENESIS III Ver. 4. shieling on the Highland moor, thorns may be seen which were unknown before. References. — III. 1-15. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Boly Scripture — Genesis, p. 5. III. 1. — Spurgeon, Sermons vol. xlvi. No. 2707. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons, vol. i. p. 185. C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, p. 237. Bishop Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. v. p. 17. R. S. Cand- lisli. Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. GO. III. 1-4. — G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 47. III. 3. — J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii. p. 118. THE SERPENT TEMPTING MAN ' And the Serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.' Genesis iii. 4. There is no thought more awful than this: that sin is all around and within us, and we know not what it is. We are beset by it on every side; it dogs our every way, draws our wills under its sway, and our- selves under its dominion. It is a pestilence that walketh in darkness, and nothing stays its advances. It passes through all barriers, and pierces every stronghold. In the beginning, we are told, sin was not in the world, and that by one man's disobedience sin hath entered. Ever since this time it has taken up its abode here; and it has been followed by death, for 'death hath passed upon all men; for all have sinned.' 'This much we do know: thai it is a will opposed to the will of God. A will which chooses evil is a will opposed to the will of God.' In fact, the will of man is in a state of rebellion against that of God. Whence, then, came this clashing of wills, this open rebellion, this presence of evil? I. The first man, fresh from his Maker's hand, placed in Paradise, and appointed lord of the earth, was endowed with every requisite for developing his God-given and God-inspired nature, and fulfilling his destiny. But a tempter came to him from the midst of the animal world, and man yielded to the tempta- tion. But when we consider that Adam was lord of this animal kingdom, and, moreover, that man alone was endued with the gift of speech, it must be evident that this tortuous animal was but the tool of that evil and serpentine Spirit, Satan, 'that old serpent called the Devil '. Under the form of this serpent, the Wicked One therefore tempted man to his destruc- tion. The temptation of the second Adam is the counterpart of that of the first. Christ overcame, that by His victory the dominion which Satan had obtained over the whole human race, through the Fall of the guilty pair, might be destroyed. The Tempter approached our Lord openly, but he came to man in disguise. It was a real serpent (not a dis- guise or assumed form), perverted by Satan to be the instrument of his temptation. Satan is still, as he was from the beginning, himself a creature of God ; and, as a creature, then, he made use of a creature to carry out his designs. When, then, the temptation came through one of the animal kingdom, it pro- ceeded from a grade inferior to our first parents themselves. There could, therefore, be no palliation for their sin. Man had dominion over the beasts of the field; he must not, therefore, take the law from them. Besides, the presence of a spirit must have been self-evident, for there was both speech and reasoning power in the serpent. When, then, they listened and were persuaded, their fall was without excuse. II. This will explain to us the sources of man's temptation. We are here upon our trial. This life is for us the time of our probation. We are free agents, and by our own will and choice we determine our eternal portion. Temptations are inevitable; no one is exempt, for we are all on the same level of our common humanity. 'To be forwarned is to be fore- armed ;' it is therefore real wisdom on our part to find out for ourselves the sources of temptation. In the case of our first parents we notice that the first source is: — (1) The evil suggestion from without. Of all the trees of the garden (including the Tree of Life) man was allowed freely to eat, but it was forbidden him to eat of 'the tree of knowledge of good and evil,' under penalty of death. The command was definite and precise ; the consequence of disobedience was made clear to them. Here was a positive law, and this moral code in its simplicity was sufficient for the training of man's moral nature. Without such a test of sincerity it could not have been perfected. Clearly, then, if man fell, it could only be by the violation of the Divine command. (2) We find innocent tendencies, proclivities, which are also a source of temptation from within. The appetites, inclinations, and desires of our flesh are not in themselves sin; it is the indulgence of them under wrong circumstances which constitutes the sin. They may be the instruments of our sanctification as well as our degradation — of holiness as well as sin. As tendencies only they are perfectly innocent, they are of God's appointment, and are the means of carrying out some pf His providential designs ; and not till stimulated into action by evil suggestions from with- out do they become sinful. Having, then, got an evil suggestion from without, and possessing the tendencies within, only the third source of temptation is wanting to complete the sin. (3) The opportunity for the sin itself. In solitude, and away from the side of her natural protector, the Tempter plied his temptation with terrible success. Thus, these three sources of temptation having 'met together and kissed each other,' the fall became in- evitable. III. The sin was committed by Eve alone. But by Adam it was repeated through her, and therefore in society. He fell through her influence. The tempted became the tempter. The strong tempted the weak, and again the weak tempted the strong. It is the weak who do most harm in God's world. The com- pletion of weakness is the weak tempting the strong. References. — III. 4. — H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Ser- mons, vol. i. p. 100. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Fam- ily Reading (2nd series), p. 156. III. 4-0. — J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. ii. p. 30. 17 2 Ver. 5. GENESIS III Ver. 6. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL * And the Serpent said unto the woman, God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. — Genesis hi. s. Can we believe this story? Most certainly. It must have happened, for it happens now. It may •well have been the first temptation, for it is the last, the most subtle, and the most widespread in the world. Let us notice. I. This is a divinely inspired warning against a common temptation. Because they cannot reconcile the facts of science with these chapters many doubt their Divine inspiration. But we need not seek for proofs of the Divine Spirit in this writing. They lie upon the surface. Three things it teaches which must have come from God. (a) All things were made by one God, and one only. (b) All things were made by God, but one thing God did not make — sin. (c) Then here we have also that truth, afterwards forgotten so long, and the rediscovery of which is re- volutionizing the world to-day — the equality of woman ■with man. II. What, then, is the temptation against which this passage warns us ? This temptation has been the commonest down the ages, and it is the commonest to- day. The majority of young men and women who are lured from the paths of virtue and Christ are drawn away by the idea that they will 'see life,' and if they come back after as 'sadder' they will be 'wiser men'. Intellectual doubt is affecting some, practical doubt of the moral intuition is ruining more. III. Let us consider the folly of yielding to this temptation. (a) Whatever wisdom can be won through sin, it is at any rate not the highest wisdom. (b) Whatever wisdom is won through sin, it does not enable us to compare sin and holiness. (c) Whatever wisdom comes through sin, it does not teach us to know life. (d) And yet it is a very subtle temptation. If mistake it be, it seems such a little mistake. It is symbolized by the apple. The eating of an apple was so small a thing to work such tremendous ruin. — E. Aldom French, God's Message Through Modern Doubt, p. 90. References. — III. 6. — Bishop Bethel, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 165. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 222. A. G. Mortimer. T/te Church's Lessons, vol. i. p. 196. J. Bush, A Memorial, p. 91. THE FALL (For Sexagesima Sunday) 'And when the woman saw thr.t the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be de- sired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.' — Genesis hi. 6. A voice, soft, melodious, insinuating, is heard by Eve as she stands observing this strange tree, and on turning she finds that it proceeds from a serpent. I. The Temptation. — The voice utters a question which perhaps we may venture to interpret in two different ways, according to the tone and manner in which the question was put. ' I have heard that God has given you all the trees of the gardens but one, to use for your own purposes and at your own discretion. Mistress of this fair domain, to whom we creatures are all of us subject, and to whom we naturally look for instruction, tell me if it is so. To you I come for information. I have no misgivings as to the goodness and the wisdom of the Great Creator; but I should like to have the matter ex- plained to me.' Or it might express this thought: 'You do not really mean to tell me that God has thrown a fence of prohibition round this wonderful tree? If so — why should He do so? Why should He deny you and your husband anything? You have been accustomed to regard your Creator as a Being of love and goodness. Is this shutting you off from a part of your domain, this grudging you a fair and noble possession, consistent with the opinion you have hitherto entertained about Him? What do you say, when you consider the matter calmly?' Now, Eve seems to have taken the second interpreta- tion; and here you have the first injection of the poison. The Tempter gets a footing in the mind of his victim by insinuating just a little incipient doubt about the goodness of God. It occurs to Eve that God was not altogether what she had been accustomed to think Him. Now at this point her duty was plain. Clearly she had made a mistake in allowing herself to be drawn into this colloquy at all, ignorant as she was of the ways of the world, and of its dark secrets. Some mischief had been done already, but it was not yet irreparable. And conscience, stirring in the breast of this child-woman, must surely have said, 'Quit this place. It is dangerous ground. Speak no more with this strange questioner. Too probably he is an enemy of your God and you.' But, unfortunately she remains, fascinated, as it would seem, and remains to carry on the conversation, in what she considers to be a generous defence of the God whom this serpent so completely misunderstands — her very con- tinuance of the colloquy showing that she is begin- ning to waver. How true a picture this is of our human life! There is a fascination for us about what is forbidden. II. The Fall.— The Tempter's work is done. He has aimed at producing distrust of God, and he has produced it. He has carried it on till it has become a settled feeling. The love of God, which was once in the woman's heart, naturally gave way when she came to look upon God as one who grudged her the highest gratification, the noblest position. And now she is quite ready to throw aside her allegiance, to act for herself, to aspire to that pre-eminence which the Tempter has falsely promised her. And she con- trives— one scarcely knows how — to draw her husband into an infatuated participation in her folly and sin. 'She did eat, and gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat.' 18 Ver. 8. GENESIS III Ver. 8. III. The Practical Point to which I am anxious to draw your special attention is this — that the aim of the Tempter throughout was to induce Adam to assert an independence of God, to claim for himself a position of false self-dependence. It was not the flavour of the fruit nor the beauty of the fruit that attracted the man, although his imagination may probably have thrown a glamour round the appear- ance of the tree, and he may have seen it through a misleading medium. We have no reason to suppose that in any respect (save that of being prohibited) the tree of knowledge of good and of evil differed from the other trees of the garden. But the flavour and the beauty were only means to an end. The thing which snared Adam was the promise that he should be as God, that he should be his own lord and master, that he should rise to all the blessedness, and dignity, and grandeur of a position in which he should recognize and bow before no will but his own. He was not beguiled so much by sensuality as by an ungovernable desire for self-exaltation. (a) Observe the consequences of the first trans- gression.— It makes the transgressor, as sin always does, mean and cowardly. It induces him, as it always does, to justify himself and to lay the blame on others. It makes him, as it always does, sneak - ingly defiant of God. It disintegrates, as it always does, instead of bringing and binding together; and it separates two beings intended to love and to help one another. (6) We who believe in the Bible are sometimes twitted with the utter insignificance of the whole transaction. — Well, I suggest three considerations. If a cobra bites me, the puncture is very trifling in- deed, scarcely visible. Look at it, and you would say, 'A prick of a pin, nothing more'. But if bitten by a cobra I shall be a dead man in an hour. Again, if I steal only a penny, I am as truly guilty of dis- honesty and of a breach of the law as if I stole a hundred thousand pounds. And, again, if sin be a virtual dethronement of the Supreme Governor of the universe, an outraging of the moral order which He has established amongst the myriads of creatures under His sway, the whole apparatus of Redemption — the Incarnation, the Death, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ — would have been needed to right the derangement caused by the sin in the Garden of Eden, even if not a single other sin had been committed during all the successive generations of the human race. THE DIVINE ALLEGORY OF THE FALL 'And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.' — Genesis in. 8. Nearly all the most eminent Biblical scholars are now agreed that the clue to the meaning of this third chapter of Genesis is to be found by regarding it as an allegory or parable rather than as a historical document in the modern sense of the term. I. The truth is one truth, but its several aspects are revealed in due order and sequence. As in a drama, the story moves in from point to point with increasing complication. The man shown to us is made in the image of God — he is the crown and summit of created things, in virtue of being a spirit- ual creature. Therein lies the core of his significance. But his moral nature is all unformed, undeveloped. Having never been tried, he cannot be said to possess a character. The narrative in Genesis helps us to understand through what experiences man outgrew his infantile condition, and how becoming conscious of a moral law, he became at the same time aware of the inward discord which is the result of a breach of law. Here, if anywhere, Adam, the first man, stands for us all. His craving for a false independence, his initial act of rebellion, his acquisition of a guilty knowledge of good and evil, his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, are the door through which he passes into the possibility of self-knowledge, and of moral freedom, won at the cost of effort and suffering. II. Again, the first sin of Scripture is in some sort the type of all our sins. They grow out of a common root. In the language of morals, they are a revolt against the pressure of rules and obligation felt to be in conflict with personal desires. In the language of the Bible, they spring from a state of rebellion against God and the order established by Him. All our worst sins, too, are marked with a certain reck- lessness of consequences. In our blindness and in- fatuation, we excuse ourselves, but the author of the record of Genesis does not stop here. He shows us in poetic imagery the inward as well as the outward consequences of any deliberate act of rebellion. All sin, until with repentance comes pardon, alters the relation between the creature and the Creator. An estranging cloud comes between the soul and God. III. Real religion stands and falls with the belief in a personal God, and in realizing the need of com- munion with Him. When once we destroy, or tamper with, the conviction that we are living, or should be living, in spiritual contact with a Divine Being who has revealed Himself to us, in His Son, worship ceases to have any real meaning. Competent observers have remarked that a reluctance to think of themselves as spiritual creatures in contact with God is one of the characteristics of those who have drunk most deeply of the spirit of this restless, inquiring age. Let us consider briefly one or two forms in which this re- luctance manifests itself. (a) One is levity, born of shallowness, like that of the Athenians who scoffed at St. Paul when he spoke to them of the resurrection of the dead. (b) Another way of hiding from God is the re- fusal to listen to the voice of conscience when it con- demns us, the ingrained habit of slipping away from reminders of duties neglected and obligations left un- fulfilled, so finely delineated by George Eliot in the character of Tito Melema. (c) We can be hiding from God even while we flatter ourselves that we are seeking His face. Even religion may be so perverted so as to become a 19 Ver. 8. GENESIS III Ver. 15. deadening influence when we identify it with opinions, or party views, or zeal for dogma, or external things like ceremonies, or forms of worship, or matters of Church order and discipline. — J. W. Shepard, Light and Life, p. 141. ADAM AND EVE— THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 'And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.'— Genesis hi. 8. I. We see Adam and Eve in the opening chapter of Genesis surrounded by the creatures that God had made, like those lower creatures in many respects, and yet absolutely different in one — the possession of a soul created in the image of God, and as they were created in the image of God, they were endowed with many great gifts — for instance knowledge. (a) Through experience we have gained much know- ledge, and by being taught have made our own what other people gathered by experience, but Adam and Eve had no parents, yet they had a very great know- ledge of the world and its powers, and that knowledge was the direct gift of God. (b) They not only knew about God, but knew God in the intimate intercourse of communion with Him, and this was the great gift which they lost to a very great extent by their sin. (c) But yet this knowledge has been more than re- stored to us through our Lord Jesus Christ. II. Both of these sorts of knowledge we may have. (a) The first imperfectly ; by the labour of investi- gation. (o) We may know too about God, for He has given us a revelation about Himself, and has given us an in- fallible guide in His Church to interpret that revela- tion, and His Holy Spirit in our hearts to help us to understand it. — A. G. Mortimer, Stories from Genesis. References. — III. 8, 9. — Spurgeon, Sermon*, vol 1. No. 2900. H. P. Liddon, Cambridge Lent Sermons (1864), p. 23. H. Hayman, Sermons in Rugby School Chapel, p. 159. W. Mellor, Village Homilies, p. 212. G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 1. H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf, p. 241. C. Kingsley, Gospel of the Pentateuch, p. 41. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 184. J. Keble, Sermons for Septuagesima, p. 139. G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, p. 16. T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual, p. 1. W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons (2nd series), p. 1. C. J. Vaughan, Penny Pulpit, No. 3263. J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children (1875), p. 177. J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. i. p. 5. Spur- geon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 412. G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 276. III. 9. — W. F. Shaw, Sermon Sketches, p. 32. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. i. p. 44. J. Keble, Sermons for Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, p. 103; Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. ii. p. 129. III. 10.— R. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 65. III. 12. — C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 347. Genesis hi. 12. 'Adam, in the Garden of Eden, said, "The woman gave it to me, and I did eat," but he was held responsible for his actions nevertheless ; and this is the great lesson to be taught to persons of feeble will and persons of arbitrary will alike.' — Dr. S. Bryant in Studies in Character, p. 162. Reference. — III. 14, 15. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvi. No. 2165. THE GOSPEL OF GENESIS 'It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.' — Genesis hi. 15. Theologians have a special name for this text. They term it the 'Protevangelium,' which being interpreted is the 'First Gospel'. Who uttered this first Evangel? God Himself. To whom was the Protevangelium ut- tered? To Satan. I. TheSaviour's Injury to Satan. — 'Her seed — it shall bruise thy head.' The margin of the Revised Version renders it 'shall lie in wait for thy head'. It has also been rendered 'shall break thy head'. An Indian Missionary told me the other day that in the East every one would understand such an allusion. A serpent is being addressed, and the poison-bag of a serpent is on or near the serpent's head. An East- ern, my friend assured me, would at once perceive that by lying in wait for a bruising or breaking the head of the serpent was meant the destroying of the poison- bag, so that though the creature might still live, its death-dealing power was done away. The Prote- vangelium is fulfilled in the Incarnate Saviour. When He became 'the seed of the woman' He accomplished this prediction in great degree. (a) What a death-blow to Satan was and is the character of our Lord. Man is by the Incarnation shown to be capable of moral and spiritual victory. The character of Christ is at once the great proof of His duty, and the great prophecy of man's glory. (b) The teachings of Christ verify this Gospel pro- phecy. No marvel Satan loathes these heavenly or- acles, and seeks to suppress them. Seen from every angle they are matchless. Compare them with the canonical sayings of other religions, and they are as sunlight as to shadow. Christ flashed on the mind of man the most splendid theology the universe has known. (c) The death of Christ lent to this message its great fulfilment. Our Lord's death was no mere in- dividual death. It was a representative death. It was a generous death. Some one has termed it a 'borrowed' death. Such indeed it was. If the poison- bag is ever to be plucked from the destroying serpent, only a Divine Being can do it, and only a dying God. Jesus conquered the foe after He seemed hopelessly conquered by the foe. Our heavenly Achilles, albeit His wounded heel, plucked in triumph the serpent's poison-bag away. (d) 'It shall bruise thy head.' This sure word is realized in the exaltation of Christ. Everything in Christianity depends on our Lord's physical resurrec- tion. If Christ be not risen there is no Christianity. (e) We see a delightful illustration of the fulfilment of this earliest Gospel promise in the conversion of sinners. Whenever a soul turns trustfully to Jesus, Satan's head is bruised. 20 Ver. 15. GENESIS III Vv. 16-18. (/) Thesanctification ofChristians has this outcome. Beautiful lives deal Satan trenchant blows. Godliness is never merely defensive it is grandly offensive. (g) Our Lord's return will give the Protevangelium its most illustrious verification. Satan will be de- stroyed with the brightness of His coming. II. Satan's injury to the Saviour. (a) The Conquering Christ is to be wounded in the struggle. Assuredly this prediction was fulfilled in the earthly sufferings of Christ. It was and is so in the trials of His People. All His servant's wounds are His wounds. 'Why persecutest thou me?' He in- quired of the astonished Saul of Tarsus. (6) The sorrows of the universe help to realize this pathetic prophecy. Nature and man are in a groaning and travailing state. There is an undertone of sad- ness everywhere and in everything. The universe He created and which He mystically indwells pains Him by its pains. (c) But the sin of the world is the most terrible illustration of this prophetic truth. By means of the iniquity of men the serpent bruises the Saviour's heel. Sinners indeed know not what they do. — Dinsdale T. Young, The Enthusiasm of God, p. 79. THE PROPHECY OF THE BRUISINQS ' I will put emnity between these (the serpent) and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his head.' — Genesis hi. 15. There is to be conflict between Christ and Satan, between good and evil — perpetual conflict. In this conflict victory will come to one side, but bruisings to both. I. Can we have the victory without the bruisings? As we read in his biography, Bishop Creighton in his early years was visited by a dream of this kind. His theory of life, as he then held it, is not very clearly ex- pressed, but perhaps we shall do him no injustice if we say that he was determined to be cheerful and content in all circumstances, to do his own work, to recognize his limitations, and so far as he could to keep himself free of strife. He knew that he could give to the world some valuable literary work, if he had leisure in which to prepare it. From the sanguin- ary conflicts of the world and the Church he shrank. For one thing he had a strong sense of the impotence of man. Man does his best and is foiled. His defeat is not due to the strength of his human foes, but to the sudden interposition of a power above. Against that power it is vain to fight. II. But we may have the bruisings without the victory. It is possible so to be overborne by the pangs and losses and defeats of the Christian soldier as to lose faith in Divine love and providence. There is an awful possibility of giving over prayer, of com- ing to think that the Lord's ear is heavy that He can- not hear, and His arm shortened that He cannot save. III. What then does the promise mean? It means that wherever Christ is there is conflict. That is the token and foundation of hope. There is enmity be- tween the Son of man and evil and that enmity never dies. But the Son of man and his legions are bruised in the fighting. Some dream of a triumph won with- out pain or pang, but it is a vain dream. IV. But the victory is sure because the leader is Christ. He did not fight merely as an example to His soldiers. His contest is much more than an addition to the records of heroism that keep the world alive. He breathes His spirit into His soldiers and He is the Conqueror. The time and the manner we must leave with Him, but He asks us to throw ourselves into the conflict, and He promises us the interpretation of reverse and delay in the world where burdens are unbound and wounds healed and mortal- ity swallowed up of life. — W. Robertson Nicoll, The Garden of Nuts, p. 219. References. — III. 15. — Phillips Brooks, Twenty Ser- mons, p. 93. J. Monro Gibson, Ages JSefore Moses, p. 98. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1326. THE STORY OF THE FALL 'Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception,' etc. — Genesis hi. 16-18. By the Fall sin entered in, and by sin a change passed over the whole world. The change affected the moral relations of man. In becoming disobedient to God he lost all control over himself. While subject to the Divine Will, he wielded absolute power over his own nature. His passions were then pure ones, held in a bond of unity and subjection. But when he re- belled, they rebelled too, and warred one against the other, bringing in turn the will into bondage to them. His will revolted against his Maker, and it became one with the will of the Evil One; it moved in con- cert with it, and became part of the evil which was in the world. Man represented the antagonistic power which broke the unity of God's kingdom ; his will was diametrically opposed to that of God. Such is sin. I. The moral consequences and chastisement of the Fall. (1) Man was driven away from the Presence of God; and from two causes, shame and fear. Ashamed, for they knew that they were naked; afraid, for they feared to meet their Maker. They had lost ' that ignorance of innocence which knows nothing of nakedness '. That it was the conscience which was really at work is evidenced by their fear, which impelled them to hide themselves. Man in his innocence knew nothing of either shame or fear. And this, too, is the peculiar trait of childhood. Adam was ashamed, but yet he thought more of the consequences of sin than of the sin itself ; more of his nakedness than of having broken the commandment of God. And so it ever is now; men think more of the pain, the shame, the publicity, the humiliation induced by sin, than the transgression itself. But an evil conscience still fears to be alone with God; and like Adam, the sinner would fain hide himself. (2) The second moral consequence of the Fall is selfishness. That is the love and consequent indul- gence of self ; the liking to have one's own way for the 21 Vv. 16-18. GENESIS III., IV Vv. 3, 4, 5. sake of having it. It is the root of all personal sin. It is the getting another centre besides the true one, round which we live and move and have our being. It brings the wills of us all into collision with the rule and will of the Eternal Good One. It is to re- volve round ourselves, instead of making God the centre of our thoughts, feelings, opinions, actions, and aspirations. Everywhere there is mutual de- pendence, mutual support, and co-operation. ' No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself,' even in the body politic (2 Cor. v. 15). Where, then, is any place for selfishness in religion? We cannot keep it to ourselves ; our light must shine before men, that they may glorify the Great Father in Heaven. Christ has given us something outside ourselves to live for: the poor, the sick, sinners at home, heathen abroad, and all who need our help and prayers. Further, as Adam and Eve showed their selfishness by their cowardice in hiding, and by the severity with which they regarded the sin of the other, while lenient to their own share in the trans- gression, so it is still; the sinner first throws the blame on others as tempters, and then upon circum- stances which God has ordained. II. The penal consequences or chastisement of the Fall were threefold : — - ( 1 ) The curse fell upon the ground. By man's sin came death ; death passed from man into the rest of creation, pervading the whole; and the curse fell on the ground (Gen. in. 17, 18; Rom. vm. 22). (2) The second penal consequence was the impossi- bility of ease ; pain to woman, toil to man, and finally death to both. There was to be no rest for either the weaker or the stronger, for the tempter or the tempted (Gen. m. 16-19). (3) The third penal consequence was the being shut out from the trees of knowledge and life (Gen. in. 22-21). After the germ of death had penetrated into man's nature, through sin, it was Mercy which prevented his taking of the Tree of Life, and thus living for ever ; the fruit which produced immortal- ity could only do him harm. Immortality in a state of sin and misery is not that eternal life which God designed for man. Man's expulsion from Eden was for his ultimate good ; while exposing him to physical death, it preserved him from eternal or spiritual death. And man, too, was shut out from the Tree of Knowledge. We all know this by bitter experi- ence. With what difficulty knowledge of any kind is obtained ; what intense application and labour are required. There is no royal road to learning; we must pay the price — sweat of brain — if we would un- lock its priceless treasures. Lastly, consider the future hopes of the human race. The first ground of hope is from what we were originally. Man was created in the likeness of God — perfect, upright, pure, and holy. What we have been, that we shall be. The second ground is from the evidence we have in our own feelings, that we were born for something higher ; this world cannot satisfy us. ' We seek a better country, that is, a heavenly ' (see Phil. in. 13, 11). The third ground is from the curse pronounced on evil. A true life fought out in the spirit of God's truth shall conquer at last. ' The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head' (Gen. in. 15). The spiritual seed culminated in Christ. But, remember, except we are in Christ, we are in guilt. ' We are yet in our sins ' ; for, ' as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive '. Reference. — III. 18. — Spurgeon Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2200. ' In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.' — Genesis hi. 19. ' It may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends no man to live in this world without work- ing: but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work. It is written, "in the sweat of thy brow," but it was never written, "in the breaking of thine heart," thou shalt eat bread.' — Ruskin, On the Old Road, vol. i. References.— III. 19.— Bishop Goodwin, Parish Ser- mons, vol. v. p. 32. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 137. III. 20.— L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 227. III. 21.— L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 209. J. Keble, Sermons for Septuagcsima to Ash Wednesday, p. 108; Sermons for the Christian Year, vol iii. p. 181. III. 22. — L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 1Sj3. J. Martineau, Endeavour after the Christian Life, p. 34 (2nd series). III. 22-24. — L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 243. III. 23. — F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading, p. 38. III. 23. — C. E. Shipley, Miscellaneous Sermons, p. 13. III. 24. — J. Wright, The Guarded Gate, p. 9. M. Biggs, Prac- tical Sermons on Old Testament Subjects, p. 20. III. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 24. A. Maclaren, Exposi- tions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 10. Genesis iv. ' Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, or it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic — the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the ad- vancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.' — George Eliot, Middlemarch. CAIN AND ABEL ' Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lortl, and Abel he also brought of the firstlings of his Mock and the fat thereof, and the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering, but unto Cain and his offering He had not respect.'— Genesis iv. 3, 4, 5. We perceive that both these brothers recognized the duty and obligation of religious worship, but when their offerings were brought God did not receive them both alike. I. From the nature of Abel's offering, through faith, he presented a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. There is every reason to believe that the offering up of animals in sacrifice to God (which was the ancient way of worship) was no idea of man's; man would never, probably, have thought of such a thing had he not been taught to do so by Divine 22 Ver. 4. GENESIS IV Ver. 7. instruction. Adam, after his fall, was probably in- structed in this, for the animals from whose skins they were clothed must have been slain, and as God did not then permit the eating of animal food, these animals will doubtless have been slain in sacrifice; the slaughtered animals being types of a crucified Saviour, the skins types of Christ's righteousness, in which every saved sinner must be clothed. II. Still the reason why Abel was preferred to Cain was not merely the nature of his offering, but the spirit, the frame of mind in which he offered it. He had faith or belief in man's fallen condition, he believed in the entrance of sin, he believed in death, he believed in that Saviour in whose blood he him- self and all others who would be accepted by God must alone be cleansed. On the other hand, Cain by his offering shows that he had no faith in the promise of a Saviour, that he did not believe in the fall — no faith in the entrance of sin, no faith in the promise of a Saviour, that he did not believe in the cleansing blood of Christ. — E. J. Brewster, Scripture Characters, p. 1. Reference. — IV. 3-16. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 14. ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 'And the Lord had respect unto Abel.'— Genesis iv. 4. Abel personified something which did not pertain to any special age, something which was cosmopoli- tan and therefore everlasting. By that cosmopolitan quality Abel was kept alive— alive amid the changing environment, alive amid the traces of the dead; he has a present voice — he yet speaketh. I. What is this quality of which Abel is the in- augurator, and by whose inauguration he lives? He is the representative of all the great who die young. The Picture is meant to declare that no really great work is ever interrupted. II. Its simple features show that Cain is a child of the dust ! Abel is a product of the Divine breath. Both the brothers are religious, so far as the form of worship is concerned, both offer a sacrifice. The difference between the dust and the divinity does not lie in the diversity of these men's gifts, but in the diversity of their spirit. III. The offerings are made, and each brother re- tires to his home. Time passes ; and by and by there happens a strange thing. These brothers meet with opposite destinies. Abel has a splendid year. For Cain the wheel of fortune has turned the opposite way, and he is filled with indignation. His is the anger of a man defrauded. To him the aggravation is not so much his failure as the fact that he has failed where his brother has succeeded. Cain has begun with covetousness and has developed into envy. The sin of the garden has become procreative. Adam had been content to say, ' All these things shall be mine ' ; Cain has reached the darker thought, ' They at least shall not be my brother's '. IV. In the view of the early spectator, Abel has not finished his work of sacrifice. It is only a germ- cell that has appeared when he is called away. His was a protest in favour of the higher over the lower life; a protest against utilitarian worship, against buying and selling in the temple of God. But it was his own higher life that he vindicated. — G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, p. 45. References. — IV. 4. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 376. IV. 5-7.— J. Oates, The Sorrow of God, p. 81. JEALOUSY 'Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.' — Genesis iv. 5. This cannot be considered too weak a motive to carry so enormous a crime. Even in a highly civilized age we find an English statesman saying: 'Pique is one of the strongest motives in the human mind. Fear is strong but transient. Interest is more lasting, per- haps, and steady, but weaker; I will ever back pique against them both. It is the spur the devil rides the noblest tempers with, and will do more work with them in a week than with other poor jades in a twelvemonth.' — Marcus Dods. CAIN— WORSHIP 'And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth ? and why is thy countenance fallen ? If thou dost well, shalt thou not be accepted ? And if thou dost not well, sin lieth at thy door.' — Genesis iv. 6, 7. Sin came into the world with Adam and Eve; then its fatal seed was planted in human nature. I. Cain's sin was not only the sin of murder, but it began as all sin does, in disobedience to God. All sin is against God because it is breaking God's law. II. Ever since the time of Cain there have been two ways in which people have worshipped God — either according' to God's revealed commands or according to their own private opinion. There are a great many people who will tell you that it does not matter how you worship God, so long as you are sin- cere, but the Bible shows us again and again from the time of Cain right through its whole history that God will not accept worship which is founded on self-will and disobedience. — A. G. Mortimer, Stories from Genesis, p. 44 Reference. — IV. 6., 7. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1929. 'Sin lieth at the door.' — Genesis iv. 7. ' Amongst the proverbial sayings of the Welsh, which are chiefly preserved in the form of triads, is the following one: "Three things come unawares upon a man, sleep, sin, and old age". This saying holds sometimes good with respect to sleep and old age, but never with respect to sin. Sin does not come unawares upon a man: God is just, and would never punish a man, as He always does, for being overcome by sin, if sin were able to take him unawares ; and neither sleep nor old age always come unawares upon a man.' — From Borrow's Wild Wales, ch. lviii. References. — IV. 7. — A. W. Momerie, The Origin of Evil, p. 101. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 22. 23 Vv. 8-16. GENESIS IV Ver. 9. THE CRIME OF CAIN Genesis iv. 8-16. ' In a famous picture in the Louvre, the painter shows us — amidst wan lights — pale crime fleeing, pursued by Truth and Justice. They hover as avengers over- head, armed with the torch and the sword. The criminal does not see them, perhaps, but the restless anxiety on his forehead tells us that he feels their threatenings — I might almost say- that their breath burns him. Human punishments are not always certain, for God reserves His hour; but the sinner, even if he does not always lose health, fortune, life, honour, feels none the less at his heels the pursuers who threaten to plunge him into the abyss where all is lost and broken. That fugitive, if we like, is Cain, the eternal image of the sinner — even the sinner who is unknown to men — the image of all those unknown Cains who have trembled, who tremble, or will some day tremble, at the mighty voice of God. ... It was no fiction which Victor Hugo invented in his poem on "Conscience". It is the Bible he is transposing, it is the history of the sinner he is symbolizing w,hen he represents him to us in his verses as "dishevelled, pale in the midst of tempests — Cain, who is fleeing before Jehovah !" While his weary family are asleep, he can take no rest. He is haunted with the vision of the look of God, of conscience, which penetrates the thickest darkness. Au fond des cieux funebres II vit un ceil tout grand ouvert dans les tenebres Et qui le regardait dans 1' ombre fixement. Vainly does he pursue his sinister flight. Even if he went to the world's end, he would find there the same gaze and the same terror. Neither the canvas of tents nor the precincts of towers — neither solitude nor the whirlwind of pleasure — can tear the sinner away from himself ; neither life nor the grave can tear him away from God. Against God, against remorse, we cannot wall up either the gate of cities or the gate of hearts. That ancestral criminal, that first homicide, the murderer of Abel, symbolizes all the others, not alone those who have shed blood, but those who have soiled their souls with more wicked murders or have dragged into evil the souls of others, their innocent brothers. For them as for him, under some dark vault, some lurking-place beneath the earth: L'osil etait dans la tombe et regardait Cain ! ' Jules Pacheu, Psychologie des Mystiques Chre- tiens, pp. 47-49. Reference. — IV. 8. — A. Phelps, The Old Testament, p. 137. THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD 'Am I my brother's keeper ?*— Genesis iv. 9. I. Your brothers! where are they? Ask Jesus Christ. Did He not say, 'When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all men unto Me ' ? They are everywhere: they are not merely those who love and respect you, but those who despise and hate you, friends and enemies alike. II. You are the guardians of your brothers. Their interests are your interests, their welfare yours. This general truth presents itself under two aspects. Man is twofold by nature. He has a body and a soul. He suffers in both. Hence arises a double mission, at once to relieve temporal miseries and to save souls. (a) You ought to compassionate and alleviate the temporal distresses of your neighbours. (b) If, however, you comprehend the true dignity of the soul, the spiritual life and its immortal destiny and bliss, will you not desire to awaken others to the higher realities and possibilities of this being? III. The love of souls! All the time the Church has lived the life of the Master it has more than felt this love; it has been penetrated by it. This is why there is in the new age and in modern life a fact un- known to antiquity, a fact peculiar to Christianity, to wit, missions. Christianity alone could give birth to them. You may be disposed to disparage them, but have you ever seriously reflected what civilized Europe would have given to pagan populations if Christian missionaries had not been there? Rifles and other fire-arms wherewith to destroy each other: brandy and opium, to brutalize and to degrade ! IV. But souls to save are not only in the far distant plains of earth. They are in your family, in your dwelling, at your hearth. They are in your streets and fields and workshops. They ply your Christian calling. Whilst therefore you endeavour to cherish a love which would embrace the whole earth, let those whom God has given to you be yet the first recipients of that love. — J. Miller, from the French of E. Bersier's Sermons Literary and Scien- tific, p. 202. HOME MISSIONS 'And the Lord said . . . Where is . . . thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother's keeper?' — Genesis IV. 9. God's question ! Man's answer ! It is not God's first question, for He had already addressed to Adam — as to the representative of the human race — that per- sonal inquiry which the Holy Spirit still brings home to every heart convicted of sin, to every man when he first realizes that he is naked before God and longs to hide himself from Him : ' Where art thou ? ' No ! this is God's second question, ' Where is thy brother ? ' And just as the first question was addressed to man upon his first conviction of sin, so this second question is addressed to man after his first struggle with his fellow-man. It is asked of the victor concerning the vanquished in the cruel competition of life, ' Where is thy brother ? ' Cain's answer, ' I know not,' was a lie, as most selfish answers are; but the important point occurs in the latter part of his reply, wherein he embodied, in the form of a counter-question, the great principle which God had so far only implied. In doing so he sent ringing down the ages a question, the answer to which must, to the latest 24 Ver. 9. GENESIS IV Ver. 9. chapter of earth's history, divide men into two classes. I. This Question is of the very Essence of the Gospel Principle. — It is at the very centre, and not at the circumference of spiritual things in the system of Christ. It is absolutely fundamental in the new or Christian covenant: for whereas the Law asked a man the question ' Where art thou ? ' the Gospel passed on at once to the more far-reaching question, ' Where is thy brother ? ' It made a man essentially his brother's keeper, and the principles of spiritual citizenship were enunciated by our Lord with the express purpose of bringing home to each one of us, His followers, this responsibility, and enabling each one of us to discharge it. II. What is the very First Principle of Heavenly Citizenship as laid down by Christ Jesus our Lord upon the mount ? ' Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' And what did He mean by it? Surely that the first condition of heavenly possession is the absolute renunciation by the human spirit of all claim to personal ownership of any earthly possession, whether it be property or time, or talent or opportunity, with which it may have been entrusted by God. And what said He next? ' Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.' What did our Lord mean by this but that the second great principle of His kingdom is this: that it is an impossibility for His true follower to be really happy as long as some one else is sad ; that even the enjoyment of the Gospel is to be con- sidered imperfect as long as there be those who know not of it, or have not accepted it; that the heavenly citizen will feel his brother's sorrow, his brother's pain; that he will mourn for his brother's sadness. Are not these the two principles which have been ignored or slurred over by the modern Church of Christ ? Do not we feel that we need their re-stating in no uncertain terms? Is it not just at this point that the Church of Christ has failed in her efforts to grapple with the Home Mission problem of our day? It is the greatest problem that the Church of Christ has got to deal with to-day ; and it is the problem which is nearest to her hand — that of the overgrown populations in the poorer parts of our great cities. III. It is the Modern Lazarus who, by the exi- gencies of nineteenth and twentieth century life, has been laid at our gate full of sores. (a) Look at the physical sore, the unhealthy sur- roundings, the fetid air of the close alleys or filthy slums. That atmosphere is full of evil of all descrip- tion. (b) Look at the social sore. — The people are not only herded together, but they are so far of a dead level of one class of society — and that the most help- less class — that there is no man to become a leader amongst his fellows. (c) Look at the moral sore. — See those public- houses at every street-corner, and abounding in all" directions, like the links of a chain which bind the people to their sin so that they cannot break away. (d) Look at the financial sore. — The poor are herded in one district by themselves, and the rich (who should be their leaven, the very stewards of God in this matter) are congregated together else- where. Time was when master and man lived near together, and they took an interest in each other's welfare; but the masters now live far afield, in the residential districts, and the men congregate in dense masses nearer to the place of their employment. Such is the Lazarus of poverty and misery and sin which is at our gate — the gate of every great city in our land— to-day. We need not stay to ask how it came to be there or whose fault it is that things are as they are. Selfishness and sin, we may be pretty sure, have had much to do with it. The great point to notice is that in the providence of God this poor man, this Lazarus with all his sores, is laid at our gate, that he is our brother, and that he is in our keeping. IV. What are we Going to do with Him? — Social movements, political movements, labour movements, have all their own part — and a very im- portant part — to take in this matter, but it will re- quire the balm of Gilead, the spiritual medicine of the Great Physician, even of Christ, the anointing of the Holy Ghost, before these terrible sores can be healed. And to this intent some one must needs go to Lazarus and tend and care for him. — T. Bhocas Waters. KEEPING OUR BROTHER 'Am I my brother's keeper?' — Genesis iv. 9. You remember the connexion in which these words were asked. They were the words of a man as he stood forth in the presence of Almighty God with his hands red with the blood of his murdered brother. It was an excuse which fell from the lips of a man who knew perfectly well that he was his brother's keeper, and it is the same excuse which has risen to the lips of men and women from that day forward — men and women who have been false to a charge which has been given to them, to the souls and bodies committed to their care, who have disgraced their humanity by neglecting those whom God has put it into their power to help. I. Who is my Brother? — 'Am I my brother's keeper ? ' Who is my brother ? Think of Calvary and of the outstretched arms of the Saviour, and see there the answer to the question — who is my brother? Those arms stretched wide, that He might embrace the whole world. He teaches us, even though upon the cross, that all men are His brothers. And so when we ask ' Who is my brother ; of whom am I the keeper ? ' the answer is, every one whom God has given you, every one whom you have the power to help, even though it be but by the kind word spoken — we are their keeper, and God looks to you to see to it that they learn from you something of His love and care. II. How am I to 'keep' him? — 'Who is my brother ; and how am I to help him ? ' Just look for one moment at the way in which Christ helped those across whom He came. 25 Ver. 9. GENESIS IV Ver. 9. (a) Help for the body. — Christ was surrounded daily by crowds of sick and suffering and poor. Think of the bodily suffering in its two great forms in which you and I know it — the suffering which comes from poverty and sickness — and see how He dealt with it. You remember in the miracle of the feeding of the four thousand that Christ said : ' Ye seek Me not because ye saw the works, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled '. But though He knew it was simply curiosity sometimes, or bodily suffering, hunger and want and poverty, still out of the abund- ance of His heart He did not deny them. Simply because they were hungry and poor He gave them to eat. And so Christ tells us to do to-day. What we very often forget is that those He has left with us are His representatives. ' The poor, the hungry, the stricken in Body,' He says, ' they are My representa- tives, and He that does it to one of these does it to Me'. (b) Help for the Soul. — But we not only think of the way Christ dealt with actual bodily suffering amongst the poor people He came across; we re- member the duty that the Church of Christ has to souls of men. Christ rarely wrought a miracle with- out at the same time touching the soul. And so it is to be with His Church. All systems, however valuable, which would try to make men better off as regards their state avail nothing until they touch the soul. (c) The wider call. — Next we must look away from our own home, and think of those in our neighbour- hood, our town, our country, and even abroad. They are all our brethren, for whom we have work to do. We have to send the Gospel of Christ to those thou- sands of additional people who are annually crowding into our great cities. These vast multitudes of people spreading out from the centre of the town or city into the suburbs, what do they find? No religious privi- leges, no church, no minister at all. And you say: ' Of course, if they want a church they must build one '. Yes, but they do not want a church. Thej» need it badly, but it is about the last thing that some of them want. We must be ready, therefore, when- ever we are asked, to help those great Home Mission Societies which seek to take to these thousands of people the blessings of the Gospel. The Church — laity as well as clergy — has to remember the teaching of our Lord in the parable of the Great Supper, when all those who were bidden would not come — and yet there was room : ' Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in '. THE FLYING ANGEL ' My brother's keeper.'— Genesis iv. 9. It is a commonplace that responsibility places man in his true position in the scale of Creation, neither too high nor too low. The fact of his responsibility proves man's possession of an intelligent mind, a moral sense and will-power which he is bound to exer- cise deliberately and for the benefit of others. Thus, when a ship is wrecked and human lives are lost, we do not blame the winds and the waves. These blind forces of Nature simply carry out the laws imposed upon them. But we have a right to blame the captain if by neglect or incompetency he has run the vessel upon the rocks. When the lightning strikes the haystack and destroys the collected produce of the year the farmer must accept the inevitable. No other course lies before him. But if tramp or labourer has dropped a burning match among the hay the farmer is justified in expressing indignation for gross neglect of necessary precautions. Yes ; man's place in Nature is too high, his power for good or evil too great, for him to attempt to shirk his unique responsi- bilities by classing himself with the beasts that perish. And yet, high as he is in the scale of Creation, man is not supreme. Above him stands God, the righteous Judge, against Whose decision there is no appeal; and, however much man may endeavour to delude himself with phrases such as fatalism and the like, his conscience admits that God is just in demanding at the Last Day an account of the deeds done in the body, and that upon that Great Assize should depend his own reward or punishment in the life beyond the grave. I. Man is his Brother's Keeper — This lesson of responsibility is not an evolution of modern ethics. At the very dawn of human life we find the truth re- vealed and enforced that man is his brother's keeper. From the first, life stands revealed to us as linked with life in the collocation of family and tribe. For good or ill, father and his children stood or fell together, king and his subjects. This simple, this rough-and- ready principle runs continually through the earlier books of the Old Testament. It strikes our modern minds with a certain moral shock to read that not only Dathan and Abiram, but ' their wives, their sons, and their little children ' were swallowed up in the common ruin; that when Achan was convicted of a theft which involved Israel in an unexpected defeat before their enemies, not Achan only, but his 'sons and his daughters ' were stoned with stones, and their bodies burned with fire. But we must remember that in the nursery period of the education of humanity lessons are taught with a dramatic simplicity suitable to an age incapable of fine distinctions. As we ponder over these past incidents we must take care not to confuse temporal with eternal punishment. Again, we must not forget that life in family or tribe was linked together not only for special punishment, but for preservation also. Noah, preacher of righteous- ness, was saved from the waters of the flood. But he was not saved alone. God's protection was extended to his family also. II. Fatalism and Responsibility. — But as life be- came more complex moral difficulties began to perplex thoughtful minds and obstinate questionings arose. These difficulties increased as men directed their at- tention not so much to the central figure of influence, patriarch or king, head of tribe or family, but to those subordinate characters in the drama, those whom his actions so vitally affected for good or ill — associated in the common salvation or the common ruin, the re- 26 Ver. 9. GENESIS IV Ver. 9. cipients of a special favour or the victims (so it seemed) of another man's sins. In dark days of de- pression or of national calamity a tendency emerged to doubt the justice of God, to despair of personal ef- fort, as though after all it mattered not, when the many were punished, whether the individual did well or ill. This train of thought, we can see at once, was radically at fault, just because it missed the whole lesson by dis- regarding the central cause. The far-reaching results of good and evil, when rightly viewed, ought to have proved an added stimulus to the cultivation of char- acter, a new call to personal righteousness of life. But in moments of despair it produced in weaker minds a contrary effect. Fatalism took the place of responsibility. The period of Jewish captivity wit- nessed the spread of pessimism, and the proverb passed from mouth to mouth : ' The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge '. It was to correct this spreading paralysis of personal effort that, by the Providence of God, Ezekiel arose with the exact message needed by the circumstances of his time. He begins by tracing the national judg- ment to continued national apostasy. But he goes on to explain that national apostasy is the sum total of individual apostasy. And individual responsibility cannot be evaded by attributing present calamity to the sins of a previous generation — to the faults of forefathers. He enunciates the law of personal lia- bility. God does not merge the individual in the nation. ' All souls are Mine,' He claims. And further, ' The soul that sinneth, it shall die '. A good father may have a bad son, and that bad son may in his turn beget a good son. But, as far as moral re- sponsibility goes, each case in God's eyes is dealt with singly. III. The Message of the Gospel. — Ezekiel antici- pates the message of the Gospel, and this in two ways. First, he calls to repentance with the promise of un- conditional forgiveness. ' When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath com- mitted, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.' Next, he points to the larger life beyond the grave. He extends the horizon. ' Turn yourselves,' he cries, ' and live ye ;' live, that is to say, the ampler, fuller life which, commencing here on earth, is continued beyond the grave. For these perplexing questions of cause and effect, of shades of influence good and malign, of rewards and punishments, can be viewed in their completeness only and finally in the Great Beyond. Then shall we un- derstand the mystery of the reconciliation of perfect justice and perfect love; we shall learn how it is that ' mercy and truth are met together ; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.' — Bishop Har.meh of Rochester. MY BROTHER'S KEEPER 'Am I my brother's keeper?' — Genesis iv. 9. ' How sin gains dominion over human nature.' I. Among the ties which bind men together what is stronger or more enduring than the sense of consan- guinity? Nothing can abolish a man's duty to the brothers who were boys with him in one home. II. But we leave home, and go out into a world of fierce competition. And competition encourages us in selfishness. Can we honestly cherish brotherly feelings for our successful rivals? One chief secret of Christianity is that it puts Divine power and meaning into human brotherhood. Christ binds us to our fellow-men by binding us to Himself. The life of self-sacrifice has its origin and fountains not in man, but in the heart of God. Ill; As soon as we recognize that this brotherhood — even with the unthankful and the evil — is a real thing, we wake up to feel the responsibility which it involves. My duty to my brother — and especially to my weaker brother — is to safeguard him from slipping away from duty, to keep him mindful of his pledges, and faithful to his vows. In life's practical business it is not easy to remember that we have a daily re- sponsibility to God for the men and women we mix with, the people we employ, and the people also who employ us. We are debtors to the wise and to the foolish. — T. H. Darlow, The Upward Call, p. 288. THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN ' Am I my brother's keeper ? ' — Genesis iv. 9. Humanity is one great body, and we as individuals are all members of that body. I. Man is united to man, nation to nation; and so complete is the union that no man liveth to himself. Nor is this union of social formation only ; the rela- tionship is vital. It is a spirit relationship. A mere social relationship would be poor indeed, for the term ' socialism ' conveys an idea of distinction. Certainly socialism is, in a measure, a means of unification, but it is also a means of separation. But while socialism has its distinctions, while it divides into classes, it is incapable of separating from the mass. If it is weak in uniting, it is impotent to detach. There is a felt though invisible something by which man is insepar- ably united to man. II. The composition of this union may be difficult to explain. But I have thought that it is God in each answering to God in all. No life is entirely void of God. Divinity has never been utterly expelled from any man. In some God sits on the throne of the heart, and governs the life ; in others He resides as an unre- cognized guest, subjugated by the mind of the flesh. III. This doctrine of universal brotherhood does not diminish the importance of that other great doct- rine— individual responsibility. It rather increases it. Personal responsibility may, as some one has said, ' exist independently of relative responsibility ' ; but the latter greatly enhances the importance of the former. We have not only to bear our own burden ; we have also to bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.— P. H. Hall, The Brother- hood of Man, p. 5. References. — IV. 9. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 277. Bishop Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. iv. p. 72. Arch- deacon Sinclair, Christ and Our Times, p. 298. J. Bateman, 27 Ver. 10. GENESIS IV., V Ver. 24. Sermons Preached in Guernsey, p. 18. D. W. Simon, Twice Born and other Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1399. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1399. 'The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me irom the ground.' — Genesis iv. io. The famous preacher, John Geiler of Kaysersberg, used this text in an unusual way. As cathedral preacher in Strasbourg from 1478 to 1510, he was often called upon to deliver funeral orations for great men. His custom was to make the spirits of bishops and others speak in their own person, as it were, and to utter admonitions whose sternness the living preacher might have feared to imitate. Geiler 's chief French biographer, the Abbe Dacheux, remarks on the truly apostolic freedom with which he was thus enabled to pour forth warnings. One of his most striking ser- mons was founded on the text quoted above. ' He effaced himself and made the dead speak in his own person. "Listen, my brothers," he said, "to the voice of your brother. ... It says remember, ' Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return '." Borrowing the words of Job, he told, in the mournful accents of Holy Scripture, of our days which are so short and yet so full of misery ; he showed the transient shadow, the scarce-opened flower which was already trampled under the feet of those who pass by. He reminded his hearers of the dread mysteries of the grave. "I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister." ' Among those who listened to Geiler of Kaysersberg were the nearest relatives and successors of bishops and other cathedral dignitaries. His pulpit method may be compared with that of Bossuet and Massillon. The Arabs have a belief that over the grave of a murdered man his spirit hovers in the form of a bird that cries, ' Give me drink, give me drink,' and only ceases when the blood of the murderer is shed. Cain's conscience told him the same thing; there was no criminal law threatening death to the murderer, but he felt men would kill him if they could. He heard the blood of Abel crying from the earth. The blood of Christ also crieth to God, but cries not for ven- geance but for pardon. — Marcus Dods. References. — IV. 10. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol viii. No. 4G1; ibid. vol. xii. No. 708. IV. 15, 16.— R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i. pp. 86 and 108. IV. 23, 24.— H. Rix, Sermons, Addresses, and Essays, p. 18. IV. 26. — E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 354. G. Brooks, Outlines of Ser- mons, p. 381. IV. — J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses, p. 116. V. 1. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 35. V. 2. — J. Laidlaw, Bible Doctrine of Han, p. 98. V. 3. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 382. V. 21-24. — J. Banner- man, Sermons, p. 24. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1307. V. 22. — C. Maclaren, Expositions — Genesis, p. 32. V. 23, 24. — E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. i. p. 157. ENOCH 'And Enoch walked with God : and he was not : for God took him.' — Genesis v. 24. The character of Enoch is the point on which atten- tion is fixed. He ' walked with God,' he ' pleased God'. I. What is Implied in this Description ? (a) Agreement. — ' Can two walk together except they be agreed ? ' Man naturally is at enmity with God, averse to Him, disliking His law. This enmity must be destroyed. There is no peace with the wicked, and as the first requisite to walking with God obedience is required. (b) Intimate Communion. — Agreement in aim and purpose is possible apart from intimacy: but walking implies close and personal converse with Jehovah. Knowledge of God begets confidence in Him, life is lived under His eye, and in constant recognition of His presence and law. (c) Progress. — He ' walked,' went on from grace to grace. There was activity in the spiritual life: no cessation of effort. God walks with us to lead us into full knowledge and holiness. II. The Foundation of His Character. — What was the fount and root of this life? Genesis is silent, but the Epistle to the Hebrews gives the informa- tion ' By faith,' etc. How great this faith was we can scarcely measure, but the least faith which brings a man to God is faith in His existence and in His love. Thus walking with God becomes a source of know- ledge and an aid to faith, enlarging its sphere, and giving greater power for service. III. The Reward. — ' God took him.' His aim was to please God, and he was rewarded with the high honour of going home without passing through the gates of death. When his character was mature the intercourse with heaven was more perfect. — J. Edwards, The Pulpit, vol. v. Genesis v. 24. I. What was the Character of the Age in which Enoch Lived? — Now respecting the age when Enoch lived we know little, but that little is very bad. He was the seventh from Adam, and lived in the time before the flood. In those days we are told the earth was corrupt before God, and filled with violence. Every sort of wickedness seems to have prevailed ; men walked after the vile lusts of their hearts, and did that which appeared good to them without fear and without shame. Such was the character of the men before the flood; and in the middle of this age of wickedness Enoch lived, and Enoch walked with God. II. What was his Character? — You have heard he walked with God, and you know perhaps it is an expression of great praise. A man that walks with God is one of God's friends. That unhappy enmity and dislike which men naturally feel towards their Maker has been removed; he feels perfectly recon- ciled and at peace. Again he that walks with God is one of God's dear children. He looks upon Him as his Father, and as such he loves Him, he reveres Him, he rejoices in Him, he trusts Him in everything. And lastly to walk with God is to be always going forward, always pressing on, never standing still and flattering ourselves that we are the men and have borne much fruit; but to grow in grace, to go on 28 Ver. 24. GENESIS V Ver. 24. from strength to strength, to forget the things behind, and if by grace we have attained unto anything, to abound yet more and more. III. Enoch's Motive. — Faith was the seed which bore such goodly fruit; faith was the root of his holiness and decision on the Lord's side — faith with- out which there has never been any salvation, faith without which not one of us will ever enter into the kingdom of heaven. IV. Enoch's End. — We are simply informed that ' He was not, for God took him '. The interpretation of this is, that God was pleased to interfere on His servant's behalf, and so He suddenly removed him from this world without the pains of death, and took him to that blessed place where all the saints are waiting in joyful expectation for the end of all things, where sin and pain and sorrow are no more. And this, no doubt, was done for several reasons. It was done to convince a hard-hearted, unbelieving world that God does observe the lives of men and will honour those who honour Him. It was done to show every living soul that Satan had not won a complete victory when he deceived Eve ; that we may yet get to heaven by the way of faith, and although in Adam all die, still in Christ all may be made alive. — J. C. Ryle, The Christian Race, p. 243. ENOCH THE IMMORTAL Genesis v. 24. What has its sublimest consummation in the Chris- tian consciousness had its crude form in the por- trait of Enoch. That portrait was God's message of universal hope. Every man of the future aspired to be an Enoch. I. Brief as it is, this record is a biography — the description of a rounded life. Three times the curtain rises and falls. (a) We see first an ordinary man — a life in no way distinguished from his contemporaries — engrossed in family cares and engaged in secular pursuits. (6) Suddenly there comes a change — drastic, com- plete, revolutionary. Up to the birth of his son Methuselah he has merely ' lived ' ; he now begins to ' walk with God '. He had lived sixty-five years as a man of the world occupied with the cares of a household. When he changes mere ' living ' into walking with God he goes over precisely the same ground — he is still occupied with the care of ' sons and daughters '. No outward eye could have de- tected any difference. (c) Now we have a third and distinctively unique ► scene. Enoch himself has disappeared : there is no trace of him. There is no grave for him. There is the place where the grave should have been, and there is a tablet above the spot; but in the tablet are inscribed the words ' He is not here ; he is risen '. II. Why is this man represented as escaping death? It is on the ground of holiness; it is be- cause ' he walked with God '. Do you think that is an accidental connexion of ideas? It is the keynote to all the subsequent teaching both of the Old Testament and of the New — the prelude to all the coming music. III. Enoch was not transplanted into foreign soil. The text says that translation was preceded by revelation — that before going out into the new world he had a picture of that world in his mind. It tells us that the beginning of the process was not the approach of earth to heaven; it was the ap- proach of heaven to earth. He did not first go to Eshcol to try the taste of the grapes; he had speci- mens of the fruit brought to him — sent unto his desert as a foretaste, and this foretaste was the climax of the glory ; it made the glory, when it came, not wholly new. — G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, p. 67. Genesis v. 24. ' Oh ! for a closer walk with God ' is number one on the list of Cowper's Olney Hymns. I. There are some hymns in our hymn books which thoughtful people decline to sing. They will tell you that the aspirations expressed are so lofty and so far above their desires, that to join in singing such hymns seems to them devoid of reality. But here we have a hymn breathing the holiest and loftiest as- pirations, and yet every member of a congregation can heartily join in singing it. Every member of a congregation, whether good or bad, can honestly ex- press a heartfelt desire for ' a closer walk with God,' and where is the man or woman who does not sigh for that ' calm and heavenly frame ' of mind which springs from a ' closer walk with God '. II. Cowper might well have selected as the motto for this hymn the words of the Apostle St. James, ' Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you '. So you see that the opening aspiration is not only thoroughly reasonable, but thoroughly scriptural, and is well calculated to give expression to the desire of every worshipper. And what prayer can be more appropriate to those who are travelling through a vale of darkness than the prayer for light! We have, thank God, the light of His Holy Book to guide our steps aright, but we need the aid of the Holy Spirit to enable us to say with the Psalmist, ' Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path '. III. Few hours in life are more fraught with happi- ness than those in which we contemplate sweet inter- course with dear ones who have passed away. And yet with all their sweetness there is felt, deep down in the heart, a want that can never in this world be supplied. This is a rough illustration of the con- dition of the lapsed Christian. The memory of the peace that was once enjoyed mingles with the feeling of present alienation from God, which no amount of worldly excitement can obliterate. This feeling of a want, this aching void in the soul is often the pre- cursor of the prodigal's return. He, like the son in the parable, comes to himself. — M. H. James, Hymns and their Singers, p. 112. References. — V. 24. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 38. J. Edwards, The Pulpit, vol. v. 29 Ver. 4. GENESIS VI Ver. 5. J. Jackson Goadley, Christian World Pulpit, 1891, p. 139. C. E. Shipley, Baptist Times, vol. liv. p. 807. E. H. Bicker- steth, Thoughts in Past Years, p. 21. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 382 ; ibid. Old Testament Outlines, p. 5. V. 26. — G. B. Cheever, American Pulpit, p. 72. VI. 2. — J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. ii. p. 161. VI. 3. — J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 159. J. Keble, /Ser- mon* for Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, p. 161. C. G. Finney, Penny Pulpit, No. 1675, p. 439. THE LESSON OF THE TOWER 'And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach into heaven: and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.' — Genesis vi. 4. The form of this story belongs to the early stages of an ascending scale of civilization. The soul of the narrative is for all time. Take one obvious aspect of that soul. The builders of city and tower were men of great ambition. They would dare high things and they would do them. This is well, for God made us all for ambition. But it is part of the tragedy of our humanity that each day we are tempted to sully am- bition with some phase of latent or expressed selfish- ness. Ambition tainted by egotism ever makes for futility. I. A Theological Application. — This is an age of controversy. Controversy means movement, not al- ways spiritual movement, but still movement, and all movement wisely directed becomes progress. When with the vision that trembles not because it has focussed itself upon the living Christ we look out upon the area of theological controversy, what see we? We see many things, and among them we discern a mighty building of Towers. All the builders are our brethren; and we can afford to look at them with the eyes of love, and to bestow upon them the dis- criminating criticism that brothers ever offer to one another. II. The Spirit of Empire — In the light of that lesson, let us look at our Empire beyond the seas and let us glance at things at home. We can only expect to justify empire by rising to the level of the duties it suggests. As certainly as a mere race selfishness dominates our colonial policy the plans of God will be thwarted, and later centuries will see this nation fall Babel-like to confusion and the dust. Let the tower teach us that you cannot build selfishly and also build permanently. III. Individual Spirituality. — We are sincere in our efforts after the spiritual life. Yet the tower totters, and is in danger of falling, because at the centre of our high desires there is often so much of subtle egotism. There are people whose desire for heaven is merely self-preservation veneered with seem- ing spirituality. The fact remains that so long as in our religious life we are seeking something for ourselves rather than something for Christ and the people, we are in danger of repeating the experience of Babel. Learn from Babel that he only builds well who builds unselfishly. THE SINFULNESS OF SIN (For Sexagesima Sunday) 'And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.' — Genesis vi. 5. We have four passages of Scripture put before us on Sexagesima Sunday which teach us the exceeding sinfulness of sin. First of all we have the Gospel, which is the par- able of the sower. It teaches us how much it matters whether the seed, the Word of God, sinks into our souls. It teaches us how serious the hinderances are which interfere with the sinking in of the seed, the Word of God, into our hearts. And that teaching, I am sure, is much needed, because one of the terrible signs of to-day is that so many people are going about saying and thinking that nothing very much matters — sin does not matter, it will be all the same a thou- sand years hence. But it does very much matter, and I want you to apply it to yourself. What are the hinderances in your heart to the seed, the Word of God, sinking in and becoming fruitful ? And then there is the Epistle, and that, you re- member, is the account of St. Paul's sufferings. What does that great list of sufferings tell us ? It speaks of the fact of what St. Paul felt about our Lord Jesus Christ and the great deliverance that He had wrought for him. St. Paul was a man who felt down to the depths of his inmost soul that to Jesus Christ he owed his salvation, that he owed to Him a great deliverance — deliverance fromsin,deliverance from eternal death. Why do we lead such easy lives? Why is it that we dislike the least pain or the least trouble we have to endure for our religion ? Because we do not realize, as St. Paul did, the great deliverance that is offered us in Jesus Christ. We have nothing approaching to St. Paul's sense of sin. And then to fill up this lesson we have God's judg- ment on sin given to us in the first lesson for the, morning and the first lesson for this evening, the third and sixth chapters of Genesis. The third chapter, you will remember, is the account of the Fall and God's punishment of our first parents; and this evening's lesson is the picture of the Flood, the great judgment of God upon the world of the ungodly, a picture in- tended, beyond question, by God to teach us the awfulness of sin and God's anger against it, and the awful consequences of sin. I. Do we Fear Sin? — Now do we fear sin as we ought? I do not think so. I think that we are much more inclined to believe that sin does not matter, and that it will be all right in the end. We have to re- member the awful possibility which hangs over every man and woman of hardening themselves into habits which become incompatible with God and God's Presence, which become eternal sin, and therefore eternally excluding from the Presence of God. II. The Greatness of the Deliverance. — The seriousness of sin is shown again by the greatness of God's means for deliverance from sin. In the Old Tes- tament we have His picture of the Ark, the building 30 Ver. 9. GENESIS VI Ver. 22. of the Ark, the tremendous labour that the work must have cost. The greatness of God's work for our de- liverance is the measure of the greatness of sin from which He works to deliver. But if that picture in the Old Testament of the means that God takes to deliver us is great, what shall we say of the redemp- tion of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ? Could any greater means be imagined than the sending of the only Begotten Son from the bosom of the Father to be a man amongst men, to live the life and die the death on the Cross? Could any means be imagined greater? The supreme greatness of Calvary is always and must be the measure to the world of the terrible greatness and awfulness of sin which crucified the Son of God. It is impossible when we think of it like that to treat sin lightly, as so many do in the present day. Never say ' I cannot help it,' and ' it does not matter '. You can help it, and it does matter. The sins that you give way to habitually matter terribly. I know they matter because sin has made me other than God meant me to be. If I had never sinned I should have been much better, more useful in the world. And I not only see sin in myself, but I see its ravages in others. I see how sin has pulled down other people; I see it all about me, and 1 can not underrate it, and think it does not matter — it does matter. Pray, then, for godly fear, and deal with sin in yourselves, so that you may be able to help others. III. Lead to the Saviour. — Surely that is the ambition of every man and woman, to be able to help their fellows, and to guide them to the Saviour. And the first step in leading people to the Saviour is to make them feel their need of that Saviour; and they never will feel the need of the Saviour unless they feel how terrible sin is. References. — VI. 5. — J. Laidlaw, Bible Doctrine of Man, p. 138. C. Perren, Outlines of Sermons, p. 306. VI. 6. — H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, pp. 293 and 302. VI. 8. — R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 108. NOAH THE RENEWER ' Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations.' — Genesis vi. 9. For the first time we are confronted with the idea of reform. Noah is not the first to protest, but he is the first to reform. With Noah, there begins the first of a series of efforts to save the world — to trans- late, not the man, but the earth. He is the sad spectator of a scene of moral corruption. His heart is heavy with the burden of a degenerate race. I. What was this vision of corruption which Noah saw? The greatest danger that can meet a human soul — the danger of mistaking evil for good. This race had fixed upon the physical development as the one end in life. They had enthroned in their imagination the men of bone and sinew. They had come to look upon meekness, mercy, compassion, as unmanly things. II. The original aim of Noah was to avert the Flood. He was not a prophet in any other sense than Jonah was a prophet. He was not magically to foretell the evitable occurrence of an event. Rather was he to proclaim that its occurrence was not inevit- able— that it might or might not happen according to the righteousness of the community. The ark of safety which he proposed to build for the world was at no time the ark of gopher wood. The ark of gopher wood was never meant for the safety of the world, but, as the writer to the Hebrews says : ' For the saving of his own house '. It was only to be used when the world refused to be saved." III. The characteristic of the life of Noah is solitary waiting. (a) We first see the man in the midst of the world, lifting a solitary protest against the life of that world. His faith watching and waiting for the dawn. (b) The man is lifted above the world. He is floated in the air in a lively sea. But even in this vast solitude this human soul is waiting for an earth renewed. (c) The world has arisen baptized from its corrup- tion. The old life is past but the new is not yet come. And there stands Noah- — solitary, waiting still. The new life has not come, but hope has dawned. — G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, p. 89. References. — VI. 9. — C. Kingsley, Tillage Sermons, p. 74. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis. VI. 9-22.— A. Mac- laren, Expositions — Genesis, p. 48, vol. i. p. 127. VI. 13. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 35. THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH ' Thus did Noah ; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.' — Genesis vi. 22. God told Noah how He was going to punish the sin of man by a flood, and told him also of the means by which he should be saved. I. God seldom punishes without warning us of the punishment which is coming. II. Noah believed God's words, and showed that he believed them by setting to work at once to build the ark. It would be very difficult to find any greater lesson than the importance of acting on our belief. III. This will lead us especially to three things: — (a) To take great pains to keep all the rules of the Church. (6) To pray with faith and to act on our prayers. (c) To repent of our sins. Repentance requires an act of will. A repentance which stops short at being sorry for what we have done wrong is as useless as a faith which does not lead us to act upon our belief. IV. We learn from Noah the importance of a life in which our actions really represent our convic- tions. (a) Its importance to ourselves since it was by building the Ark that Noah found a refuge and was saved. (b) Its importance to others since it was by build- ing the Ark that Noah witnessed to the world that 31 Ver. 1-22. GENESIS VI L, VIII Vv. 1. he believed God's message of warning. A. G. Mortimer, Stories from Genesis, p. 81. Reference.— VI. 22. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 383. THE STORY OF THE FLOOD Genesis vn. vin. It has been remarked that though the narrative [of the Floodjis vivid and forcible, it is entirely want- ing in that sort of description which in a modern historian or poet would have occupied the largest space. ' We see nothing of the death-struggle ; we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the frantic agony of husband and wife, and parent and child, as they fled in terror before the rising waters. Nor is a word said of the sadness of the one righteous man who, safe himself, looked upon the destruction which he could not avert.' The Chaldean tradition, which is the most closely allied to the Biblical account, is not so reticent. Tears are shed in heaven over the catastrophe, and even con- sternation affected its inhabitants, while within the ark itself the Chaldean Noah says : ' When the storm came to an end and the terrible water-spout ceased, I opened the window and the light smote upon my face. I looked at the sea attentively observing, and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like seaweed the corpses floated. I was seized with sad- ness; I sat down and wept and my tears fell upon my face.' — Marcus Dods. References. — VII. 1. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Bible Ob- ject Lessons, p. 1. M. Badger, American Pulpit, p. 96. J. Keble, Sermons for Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, p. 171. Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii. p. 171. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 118. VII. 1-7. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1336. VII. 15. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. liii. No. 3042. VII. 16. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1613. NOAH SAVED IN THE ARK Genesis viii. 1-22. Traditions of the Flood linger among all branches of the human race except the black. Remember from the Greek story of Deucalion, when Zeus had resolved to destroy mankind, after the treatment he had received from Lycaon, Deucalion built an ark in which he and his wife Pyrrha floated during the nine days' flood which destroyed Greece. When the waters subsided, Deucalion's ark rested on Mount Parnassus. Ten buildings the size of Solomon's temple could have been stowed away in Noah's Ark. In 1609 a Dutchman, Peter Jansen, built a vessel in the exact proportions of the ark, only smaller. Every one laughed at him, but he kept sturdily on. When his vessel was launched it carried more freight and sailed faster than any other ships of the same size. Reference. — VIII. 1-22. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 55. GOD'S REMEMBRANCE OF NOAH 'God remembered Noah.'— Genesis viii. i. The beautiful simplicity of this language goes home to the heart of every reader. We picture Noah in his isolation, in his apparent desolateness and hope- lessness, his ark alone upon the wide-spreading waters, and no living soul to hail him and to cheer him with good news. Had he thought himself for- saken and forgotten, his ark ' alone on a wide, wide sea,' we could not have wondered. But ' God re- membered Noah '. When the Scriptures speak of the remembrance of God, it is usually remembrance ' for good '. So it is here. I. The Purpose of God's Remembrance. (a) To deliver him from danger. — The provision of the ark, into which God had appointed that Noah and his family should enter for refuge, was a measure of safety; but it now seemed as though the very refuge was itself a source of danger. How long could such a captivity with its attendant privations be endured? Were the members of this rescued family to be left to drift upon the waters and to perish? These questions were answered by the Lord remembering Noah. Let such as are placed in circumstances of peril, hardship, and anxiety be assured that whilst they remember and call upon God He will remember and will not forsake them. (b) To reward him for his piety. — Noah had been ' faithful among the faithless,' had maintained the true religion amidst prevailing corruptions. And God did not forget His servant's justice and devout- ness, but treated him with a discriminating favour. As Nehemiah afterwards entreated God to remember him for good, and to remember his works, so now doubtless the second father of the race called upon the Lord God. And his cry was not unheeded, for the Lord remembered him in mercy. (c) To establish with him an unchanging coven- ant.— ' God remembered Noah ' to such good pur- pose as to undertake on his behalf, and on behalf of his posterity, engagements which have proved most advantageous and beneficial to the race. The pro- mise was given that the waters should no more sub- merge the earth, that the seasons should pursue their regular and uninterrupted course; and these promises were confirmed by a sign, the bow in the clouds, at the sight of which the heart is still cheered and the hope is still inspired. II. The Character of God's Remembrance. (a) It is individual. — ' Noah, and every living thing.' Man has the power of generalizing; but it is his imperfection that necessitates the expedient; imperfection of memory and general intellectual power; imperfection of sympathy. Every thing and every heart is present to God in its distinctiveness of individuality and condition. The very hairs of your head are numbered; He hears the young ravens when they cry. (b) It is universal. — The ark was then the living world, and He remembered all in it. ' We are also His offspring.' The meanest thing that lived is cared for, loved, remembered by God. Be kind to dumb animals. Also, have wide sympathy and large hope. Rejoice not that you are the members of a small family, a pet few, for you are not; but that you are 32 Vv. 20, 21. GENESIS VIII Ver. 21. the child of a Father of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. (c) It is not lessened by the terrible judgments which He executes. — The floods that drown a world do not quench His love, or obliterate His remem- brance. The ark tossing helmless on the wide waste, and every living thing in it, is remembered by God. God remembers every living thing. He has the destinies of all creatures in His hand and on His heart. After the seemingly helpless, hopeless drift- ing of the ark, it will rest at last; and new heavens will smile upon a renovated earth ; and a ' rainbow ' will be ' about God's throne, in sight like unto an emerald '. References. — VIII. 1. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Ood's Heroes, p. 1. VIII. 4. — C. D. Bell, Hills that Bring Peace, p. 23. Bishop Browne, Sermons on the Atonement, p. 67. VII. 9. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi, No. 637; Hid. vol. xl. No. 2373. NOAH'S SACRIFICE 'And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour.' — Genesis viii. 20, 21. I. What was the first employment which Noah set his hand to when he came out of the ark? His soul was full of thanks and praise; as he knew the way that God had appointed, by which he and all sinful men should express their praise, he complied at once with that service of thanksgiving which God had ordained, the offering up a sacrifice. II. But how could he afford to spare the animals which were requisite for a sacrifice? Noah had in his possession but a little stock. But Noah was a man of faith and piety: his faith led him to believe God's promise, that the fowl and the cattle should increase abundantly, and his piety led him to feel that he would sooner lose every sheep or bullock he possessed than leave his God unthanked and unacknowledged in the way that was ap- pointed. III. And how did God regard it? To him Noah's motives, faith, thankfulness, and obedience were as a secret refreshing scent to ourselves. Noah's faith looked above the lamb or bullock which he offered to Him whose death upon the cross they represented, and God therefore was well pleased with the faith and the obedience. IV*. What did it lead Him to promise and engage for? Such a promise that we may consider ourselves indebted to it, for God's forbearance even now, for the regularity with which our spring succeeds to winter, and our harvest to the seedtime, and our day to night. It is not because man has become a better object of God's bounty now than in the old days before the Flood. It is because God had respect to Noah's sacrifice, because in it he re- garded that better sacrifice which it represented and set forth. — E. J. Brewster, Scripture Characters, p. 11. THE FIGURATIVE ELEMENT IN BIBLE LANGUAGE ' The Lord smellod a sweet savour.' — Genesis viii. 21. There is a saying of the rabbis, which, if its full significance be understood, and wisely applied, is worth the whole folios of their formal exegesis. It is that ' The law speaks in the tongue of the sons of men '. If the rabbis had taken to heart this saying of their own famous Rabbi Ishmael, the greater part of their exegetic system would at once have been shown to be nugatory. For that system, as it gained vogue in spite of some strong protests, is founded on the prin- ciple that Scripture language is so mysterious, so un- earthly, so little accordant with the ordinary tongue of men, that it may be distorted into the most monstrous meanings, and pressed into the most ex- orbitant inferences. It has been a terrible disaster to the Christian Church that she accepted without challenge the vicious principles of Talmudic inter- pretation. Out of many dangers which have resulted from the error of literalism let me choose two. I. Language and thought can no more exactly coincide than two particles of matter can absolutely touch each other. No single virtue, no single faculty, no single spiritual truth, no single metaphysical con- ception, can be expressed without the aid of analogy and metaphor. Now if this be true in general, how much more true is it of any language in which we speak of God. The untrained imagination of the world's childhood could not conceive of a bodiless and omnipresent Spirit. It was necessary, therefore, for the sacred writer to speak of God as if he had a human body; and this is what is called anthropo- morphism. II. But if harm was done by the crude errors of the heresy which insisted on exact literalism, and declared that the Trinity wore a human form, per- haps even deadlier evil arose from the imperfection of language which is technically called anthropopathy ; namely, the attribution to God of human passions. When we speak of God's wrath, and fury, and fierce jealousy, and implacable rage, and describe His awful majesty, the 'Tartarean drench' of many modern sermons, or in the tempestuously incongruous language of many modern hymns, we ought to beware lest we are talking with too gross a familiarity of Him ' whose tender mercies are over all His works '. It is then most necessary to carry with us into the study of the Scriptures the perpetual sense of the shadows, the imperfection,the uncertainties of human languages. There are hundreds of passages of the Bible which have been misunderstood by millions, misunderstood for ages, misunderstood at times by perhaps nearly every living representative of the Church of God. All that we can now do is to gather up the signific- ance of these considerations in a few general rules, (a) There is no basis whatever for the allegorical system of interpretation, in plain passages or ordinary narratives. To admit such a style of exegesis is to forget the very meaning and purpose of ordinary 33 3 Ver. 22. GENESIS VIII Ver. 22. language, (o) Even where we have to deal with professed metaphor, or with allegories and parables, theological conclusions may never be based on isolated expressions or collateral inferences. — F. W. Farrar, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 392. References. — VIII. 21. — J. Burnet, Penny Pulpit, No. 1485, p. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 615. 0. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 258. HARVEST THANKSGIVING • While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.' — Genesis vni. 22. Why is it that we are grateful? Why is it that we like to express this when we realize benefits that we have received? I think we shall find that the fact of this quality of gratitude and this expression of thankfulness is implanted in us by our instincts, and that it is also a definite revelation of God, that He requires it at our hands, that a grateful, thankful disposition is that which goes to make up the char- acter of man as God would have it. We like when we have done a kindness to know that it has touched the heart of him to whom it has been done. We like ourselves to recognize gratitude in others. So then it is the same with our heavenly Father. That which I have read as our text is per- haps one of the first examples of it. God is accepting there the offering of thanksgiving after the Flood which overwhelmed the earth, or that portion at least which was inhabited by man. We look to the New Testament. We find that our blessed Lord especially emphasized His acceptance of gratitude and the expression of it, as in the case of the ten lepers. We might multiply instances, but we realize that God Himself has distinctly made us know that the spirit of gratitude is a spirit that He desires to see as a part of human character. I. Why is this Harvest especially a Cause of Thanksgiving ? (a) It is the fulfilment of a Divine promise. — We remind ourselves of the goodness of God in the fulfilment of that promise that these things that go to make our lives bright and happy, the morning and the evening, the day for labour and the night for rest, the summer and the winter, and the seedtime and the harvest, they shall never cease while the earth remaineth, as they once ceased in the days of the Flood of Noah. (0) We regard it also as a fulfilment of a desire on our part as the granting of prayer. — It is a very curious thing that our blessed Lord, Who came on earth, as we have said, to reveal God's mind with regard to men's life, when asked how to pray, taught those pattern supplications which are contained in what is called The Lord's Prayer, and if we offer these supplications day by day, and very thought- fully, we shall quite understand how all through the year we have been crying to God for a certain thing, ' Give us day by day our daily bread,' or, ' our bread to-day for to-morrow,' as some translators would have it. We have been crying to God so to bless the earth that it may produce its fruits for our use. How far this Divine miracle would cease, were the human cry to cease, we do not know. But we know that, in answer to that Divine command, daily, a great stream of intercession goes forth to God. And so, at the end of the year we gather together, in order to return our thanks for the giving of the gift for which we have prayed ; for, after all, it is by Divine arrangement that the want of one part of the earth is supplied by the plenty of the other, that means of locomotion increase as men's needs increase, so that we are fed not only by the produce of the land on which we live, but by the whole great world of which we are a part. II. How are we to Return Thanks? (a) By the service we offer. — It is a very striking thing, is it not, that in the Old Testament, when God prescribed great festivals for the Jews, He pre- scribed three of them, as distinctly in connexion with the ingathering of the fruits of the earth — the sow- ing, the first fruits, and the ingathering. So it was in the mind of God especially then, that thanksgiving should be offered by people united in the act of worship and praise, as it were, making beautiful the thank-offering that they sent up to heaven. (o) And then there is that further act of wor- ship by which we most specially and signally mark our festivals of thanksgiving, the great thank-offering in the holy communion which our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ gave us, the great thank-offering, as it used to be called in the early Church, the Eucharist, as we call it, which signifies the great service of thanksgiving. (c) We should offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, to the service of our God. That which God would have at our hands in the time of our thanks- giving is that which we can give — an offering of our- selves. HARVEST FESTIVAL ' While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.' — Genesis viii. 22. I. This passage is one of what are usually called the ' Jehovistic ' sections of the book of Genesis. Specific portions of the narrative are characterized by the constant recurrence of the name ' Lord,' which is the translation in our Revised Version for 'Jehovah/ whilst other and more lengthy parts are usually dis- tinguished by the exclusive use of the appellation ' Elohim ' which is invariably rendered ' God '. This word is generic, and is in Scripture applied to the heathen divinities as well as to the true God, whilst the title ' Jehovah ' or ' Lord ' is specific, or rather essentially personal, and denotes the national or covenant God of Israel. II. It is an important fact that the God of the seasons, the God of Nature, is the '■ I am,' the self- existent one of Jewish worship, and that fact gets explicit statement in the earlier pages of the Revela- tion. An intelligent personal will is thus perceived 34 Ver. 11. GENESIS IX Ver. 13. to be the guiding force or principle in all changes and development, whether of nature or of providence. Nothing comes to pass by chance or an inexorable necessity, as some of the more thoughtful heathen supposed ; the more destructive forces of the universe, storms and floods and earthquakes, are not diabolic, the sad and malignant work of evil supernatural spirits as others thought, but, however, inexplicable, are the issue of the Almighty fiat of Him who ruleth all things according to the counsel of His own will, ' the Lord '. III. The unchangeable faithfulness of the Lord under all His successive dispensations is one main truth and lesson of the passage now before us, the rainbow in the domain of nature being no less a visible and sure sign or token of it, than the water or the bread or wine of the Sacraments in the sphere of grace. Salvation is all of grace from beginning to end ; but our special business usually is to trace the Hand which wrought it out in the bounties of nature,in the joyousness of the harvest home and the vintage. — J. Miller, Sermons Literary and Scientific, p. 179. References. — VIII. 22. — D. J. Waller, Preachers' Mag- azine, vol. xix. p. 415. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. j. p. 140. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1891. IX. 1-7. — R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 140. IX. 4. — A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons, vol. ii. p. 1. IX. 8-17. — A. Maclaren, Expositions — Genesis, p. 60. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 151. THE BOW IN THE CLOUD ' I will establish My covenant with you.' — Genesis ix. 1 1. In the midst of wrath God remembered mercy. Upon the subsidence of the Flood and the restoration of the family of Noah to their accustomed avocations, the great Ruler and Lord graciously renewed to the human race the expression of His favour. I. The Covenant was established between, on the one hand, the Lord Himself; on the other hand, the sons of men, represented in the person of Noah. (a) Its occasion. — It was after the vindication of Divine justice and authority by the deluge of waters; it was upon the restoration of the order of nature as before ; it was when the family of Noah commenced anew the offices of human life and toil. A new be- ginning of human history seemed an appropriate time for the establishment of a new covenant between a reconciled God and the subjects of His kingdom. (6) Its purport. — It was an undertaking that never again should the waters return in fury so destructive and disastrous. (c) Its nature. — In an ordinary covenant, the parties mutually agree to a certain course of conduct, and bind themselves thereto. Now, in any agreement between God and man, it must be borne in mind that the promise which God makes is absolutely free; He enters into an engagement of His own accord, and aware that man can offer Him no equivalent for what He engages His honour to do. (rf) Its sign. — The bow in the cloud was probably as old as the Creation, but from this time forth it became a sign of Divine mercy and a pledge of Divine faithfulness. Something frequent, something beauti- ful, something heavenly— how fitted to tell us of the love and fidelity of our Divine Father ! II. God is to all a Covenant Ood. — He has given offers of mercy, assurances of compassion, promise of life to all mankind. His covenant has been ratified with the blood of Christ. To those who enter into its privileges He says, 'This is as the waters of Noah,' etc. (Isa. liv. 9). References. — IX. 11. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons, vol. i. p. 198. Bishop Armstrong, Parochial Ser- mons, p. 163. IX. 12, 13. — R. Winterbotham, Sermons, p. 84. THE RAINBOW THE TYPE OF THE COVENANT 'And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations : I do set My bow in the cloud,' etc. — Genesis ix. 12-15. God was pleased to impart to Noah the gracious assurance that He would ' establish His covenant,' to appoint an outward and visible sign which would serve at once to confirm men in their faith and to dispel their fears. I. The rainbow is equally dependent for its exist- ence upon storm and upon sunshine. Marvellously adapted, therefore, to serve as a type of mercy follow- ing upon judgment — as a sign of connexion between man's sin and God's free and unmerited grace, con- necting gloomy recollections of past with bright expectations of future. II. It is also a type of that equally distinctive peculiarity of Christ's Gospel, that sorrow and suffer- ing have their appointed sphere of exercise both generally in the providential administration of the world, and individually in the growth and develop- ment of personal holiness. It is the Gospel of Christ Jesus alone which converts sorrow and suffering into instruments for the attainment of higher and more enduring blessings. III. As the rainbow spans the vault of the sky and becomes a link between earth and heaven, so, in the person and work of Christ, is beheld the unchange- ableness and perpetuity of that covenant of grace which like Jacob's ladder maintains the communica- tion between earth and heaven, and thus by bringing God very near to man, ushers man into the presence- chamber of God. IV. In nature the continued appearance of rainbow is dependent on the continued existence of cloud. In heaven, the rainbow will ever continue to point back- ward to man's fall and onward to the perpetuity of a covenant which is ' ordered in all things and sure '. But work of judgment will then be accomplished, and therefore the cloud inseparable from the condition of the redeemed in earth — will have no more place in heaven. — Canon Elliott, The Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v. p. 151. THE MESSAGE OF THE RAINBOW ' I do set my bow in the cloud.' — Genesis ix. 13. When a man has passed through the deep waters as Noah passed, there is a new depth in the 35 Ver. 13. GENESIS IX., XI Ver. 32. familiar Bible, there is a new meaning in the familiar bow. I. What we most dread God can illuminate. If there was one thing full of terror to Noah, it was the cloud. How Noah with the fearful memories of the Flood, would tremble at the rain-cloud in the sky ! yet it was there that the Almighty set his bow. It was that very terror He illuminated. And a kind God is always doing that. What we most dread, He can illuminate. Was there ever anything more dreaded than the Cross, that symbol of disgrace in an old world, that foulest punishment, that last in- dignity that could be cast on a slave? And Christ has so illuminated that thing of terror, that the one hope to-day for sinful men, and the one type and model of the holiest life, is nothing else than that. H. There is unchanging purpose in the most changeful things. In the whole of nature there is scarce anything so changeful as the clouds. But God, living and full of power, would have His name and covenant upon the cloud. And if that means any- thing surely it is this: that through all change, and movement, and recasting, run the eternal purposes of God. III. There is meaning in the mystery of life. Clouds are the symbol, clouds are the spring of mystery. And so when God sets His bow upon the cloud, I believe that there is meaning in life's mystery. I am like a man travelling among the hills and there is a precipice and I know it not, and yonder is a chasm where many a man has perished, and I cannot see it. But on the clouds that hide God lights His rainbow; and the ends of it are here on earth, and the crown of it is lifted up to heaven. And I feel that God is with me in the gloom, and there is meaning in life's mystery for me. IV. But there is another message of the bow. It tells me that the background of joy is sorrow. God has painted His rainbow on the cloud, and back of its glories yonder is the mist. And underneath life's gladness is an unrest, and a pain that we cannot well interpret, and a sorrow that is born we know not how. Will the Cross of Calvary interpret life if the deepest secret of life is merriment? Impossible! I cannot look at the rainbow on the cloud, I cannot see the Saviour on the Cross, but I feel that back of gladness there is agony, and that the richest joy is born of sorrow. — G. H. Morrison, Flood Tide, p. 170. References. — IX. 13. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Alraham, p. 54. IX. 14. — C. Perren, Revival Sermons, p. 202. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 28. IX. 15. — J. Monro Gibson, The Ages oefore Moses, p. 138. IX. 16. — H. N. Powers, American Pulpit of To-day, vol. iii. p. 414. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 517. IX. 18-29. — R. S. Candlish, Booh of Genesis, vol. i. p. 157. X. 1-5. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Alraham, p. G4. X. 32. — S. Wilberforce, Sermons, p. 64. XI. 1. — J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (10th Series), p. 103. XI. 4-9.— S. Leathes, Studies in Genesis, p. 81. XI. 9.— F. E. Paget, Village Ser- mons, p. 223. XI. 27.— R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 181. J. Monro Gibson, The Ages oefore Moses, p. 159. XI. 31. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2011. YOUTH AND AFTER ' And Terah died in Haran.'— Genesis xi. 32. ' And Terah died in Haran.' What of that? It was not until they came to Haran that they touched, as it were, their first footprints and found the old religion. There had been little temptation to pause before on the score of a people's worship, but when, worn out in body and mind, Abram suddenly came upon the old religion, his journeyings after another faith and form of worship were at an end. It was Abram the younger man who withstood the temptations of Haran. I. You see the thought underlying this bit of prosaic information. It simply means that the years close down the possibilities of a certain kind of moral Exodus. If you wait until you get into years before you find right principles, form good resolutions — well then it is better to make some start in the right direction, but why pile up the odds that start you never will? The enthusiasms of old men are as rare as they are short-lived unless they are evolved out of earlier and worthy days. I am far from saying that old age necessarily blocks the way to great attempts or to conspicuous success in them. All history would cry out against such a statement. There is an old age we delight to honour and which reverses the ordinary attitude to it in the general world. II. We may apply what has been so far advanced, first to pleasures, and secondly to something more important to you than old age, and that is — middle life. (a) To everything, says the preacher, there is a time and a season, and it must be that youth is the time for amusements and pleasures which are not so much the privilege of youth as native to it. We are told that Darwin in his old age expressed regret that he had deprived himself of so many of the pleasures and resources of life by his concentration upon that study the results of which have made his name so justly famous, and no young man should give place to a doctrine of work which excludes his right to the joyous abandon of his years. (6) When a man begins to sight the middle years he learns to know himself as never before or after. This is the stage where increase of knowledge often means increase of sorrow. It is in truth the sorrow of finding out our limitations, which in their first acquaintance often seem more appalling than they actually are. While youth may be saved by hope of what is to be, middle life is often lost in the drab reality of what is, and even where middle life has won success in the things men covet, and after which they strive, it may be that that success is just deadly in its reaction of monotony. Men do not always go under because they cannot do things. They fail not because they do not know what it is well to do, but because they do not choose to attempt it. And why do they not choose ? So far as this question affects middle life it is largely because so few of us have the 36 Ver. 1. GENESIS XII Vv. 1-3. grit to face its difficulties. — Ambrose Shepherd, Men in the Making, p. 1. 'Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee.' — Genesis XII. I. Abraham was the father of the faithful, and we have here the first recorded test to which his faith was put. The first and one of the greatest. I. The Substance of Qod's Call to Abraham. — 1. He was called from rest to pilgrimage. — From his country and kindred and father's house, to undertake lifelong journeying. He was at an age at which he ■would fain rest. His wanderings seemed to be begun at the wrong end of his life. But it was then God said, ' Get thee out '. It is as life advances that the idea of journeying, ' getting out,' comes home to men. The child rests in his home ; but the outside world, with its responsibilities, self-direction and support, begins at last to open to him, and he must ' get out '. So with resting among old friends, etc. We must one day ' get out '. As years increase, all things seem in constant flow. Then at death. Above all, hear God's voice telling you to set out on the Christian pilgrimage. 2. He teas called from the familiar to the un- tried.— The child's familiarity with his environment is never attained to in after years. ' New faces, other minds ' meet men's eyes and souls ; and they know, however peaceful their lot may be, that they are not in the old, familiar home. But let us extend our idea of home. The lifelong invalid would feel from home in another room of the same house. Let God be our home, the great house in which we live and move about; then wherever He is, we shall feel at home. Most so when we leave the lower room altogether to be ' at home with the Lord ' above. 3. He was called from sight to faith. — From the portion he had in his country and in his father's house, to wait at all times on the unseen God, and go to the land which He would show him. Let us willingly make this exchange. God is better than country, and kindred, and father's house. II. The Characteristics of Qod's Call to Abraham. — 1. It laid clearly before him all that he was to surrender. — How full and attractive the picture is made to Abraham's last sight of it ; ' thy country, kindred,' etc. So, when from duty and loyalty to Christ, we make sacrifices, etc., the possessions will often seem peculiarly fascinating, just when we are to part with them. 2. It was uncompromising. — ' Get thee out,' with no promise or prospect of ever returning. The gifts of God are never repeated in exactly the same form. The pleasures of sin must be left ungrudg- ingly and for ever. 3. It was urgent. — ' Get thee out.' Now. ' Abra- ham departed, as the Lord had spoken to him.' Let us give the same ready, instant obedience. 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee.' — Genesis xii. i, 2. It was with these words that Johann Reuchlin sum- moned his grandnephew, Philip Melanchthon, to accept the Greek professorship at Wittenberg which was offered him, in the summer of 1518, by the Elector Frederick of Saxony. Melanchthon was at that time only twenty-one and had been studying and teaching for some years at the University of Tubingen. He wished for a change, and had written to Reuchlin that he was wasting his time in element- ary work. He promised in a letter of 12 July to go wherever Reuchlin might send him and to work hard. Looking to the distant future, he hoped that the time would come when rest and literary leisure would be all the sweeter from the previous toil. On 24 July Reuchlin wrote the famous letter in which he quoted the passage from Genesis. ' I will not ad- dress you in poetry,' he said, ' but will use the true promise which God made to faithful Abraham: " Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing" (see Genesis xii.). So does my mind predict your future, so do I hope for you, my Philip, my work and my consolation. Come therefore with joyous and cheerful mind.' After giving many practical directions for his grandnephew's packing, journey, and family farewells, Reuchlin bade him not linger, but hasten. Evidently the shrewd scholar and man of business feared that if the Elector quitted Augsburg without having met his new pro- fessor, the negotiations which he himself had so cleverly arranged might fall to the ground. Dr. Karl Sell, commenting on this letter (which will be found in full in the Corpus Reformatorum, vol. i. pp. 32, 33), says that Melanchthon had no idea when he accepted the call of the nature of the task that lay before him in Wittenberg. ' He set forth with no presentment of the future towards that great vocation which brought him so much suffering and which has given him his place in the world's history.' His longing for literary repose was never fulfilled, but Reuchlin's prediction was realized in a way of which the writer never dreamed. THE FIRST MISSIONARY 'Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee.'— Genesis xii. 1-3. I. How strange that call must have seemed to Abraham. It was not like the call which sends forth missionaries now. It was a command to strike out into a new and untried path. It was very indefinite as to the immediate future. He was to go to Canaan and live there. But we are not told that he preached to the people, or endeavoured to convert them to his own faith. We can look back upon Abraham's work and its fruits, upon God's promise and fulfilment, and we can see how the call of Abraham was a great step in God's purpose to train a race of men who should be missionaries to humanity. II. In the New Testament the missionary call is renewed, only it is made more sweeping. It is no 37 Vv. 1-9. GENESIS XII Vv. 6-9. longer to one country or nation but to all humanity. How far has this promise been fulfilled? It is one of the most encouraging signs of our own time that there is a real revival of missionary interest, a realiza- tion of our duty to preach the Gospel to the heathen and an attempt to fulfil it- — A. G. Mortimer, One Hundred Miniature Sermons, p. 321. GOD CALLS ABRAM Genesis xii. 1-9. The same voice, says F. B. Meyer, has often spoken since. It called Elijah from Thisbe, and Amos from Tekoa ; Peter from his fishing nets, and Matthew from his toll-booth ; Cromwell from his farm in Huntingdon, and Luther from his cloister at Erfurt. The same voice, we may add, called the Pilgrim Fathers when on 6 September, 1620, they set sail from Plymouth in the ' Mayflower,' bound for the banks of the Hudson. Note the three marks of the pilgrims given by Bunyan: (1) their dress was strange, (2) few could understand what they said, (3) they set very light by the wares of Vanity Fair. References. — XII. — S. Wilberforce, Sermons, p. 165. XII. 1-3. — J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (1st Series), p. 126. F. D. Maurice, Patriarchs and Law Givers of the Old Tes- tament, p. 68. XII. 1-7. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlviii. No. 2523. XII. 1-9. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, p. 66. ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 'And I will make of thee a great nation.' — Genesis xii. 2. Abraham is to dream of a land beyond the years. The most mature of all the Gospels declares that he anticipated the Christian Era. I. He is born too soon. The father of a vast mul- titude, he is himself a lonely figure — about his sur- roundings, unappreciated by his age. He has conceived an idea to which his age is a stranger, an idea the working out of which itself involves sacrifice. II. Abraham is not the man of a village seeking a metropolis, he is the man of a metropolis seeking to extend a village. The dream which burst upon the "soul of Abraham was the hope of being a secular mis- sionary, a colonist of waste places. III. This portrait of Abraham is the earliest at- tempt to represent a cosmopolitan man — a man seek- ing to make the world a recipient of his own blessing. He is the forerunner of that great missionary band which, whether in the sphere of religion or of culture, have been the pioneers of a new era to lands that were outside the pale. But for that very reason it was a curtailment of his sphere among contemporaries. It exposed him to social ostracism. It separated him from his age. The path selected by Abraham was a path which the world of his day did not deem heroic. IV. The life of Abraham begins with an experience which, in germ, is identical with that of Jesus. On the threshold of his ministry there is an analogy be- tween the first three trials of Abraham and the three temptations of Jesus. (a) He is first assailed by famine; the bodily nature is made on the very threshold to protest against the enterprise. (b) Then comes the temptation, not to abandon, but to accelerate it by an exercise of physical power. Nor does Abraham come forth scatheless from the trial. (c) But the third temptation is destined to redeem him. There comes the call to an act of choice between worldly possessions, in which he selects the apparently barren one. V. Abraham is a cosmopolitan at the beginning, and an individual at the end. The man who at the opening of the day has only an eye for multitudes, subsides at evening into the family circle. The starry dome is exchanged for the precincts of the tent. The sacrificial character remains, but its sphere is altered ; it ceases to be a sacrifice for the nations, it becomes a surrender to the hearth. — G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, p. 110. References. — XII. 2. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2523. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, p. 293. J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. x. p. 113. XII. 5. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 77. II. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Common Life Religion, p. 134. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 843; ibid. vol. xxxiv. No. 2011. 'And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, Who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the west, and Hai on the east : and there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south.' — Genesis xii. 6-9. Up to the chapter out of which this text is taken, ■ the history of the Bible is rather taken up with the history of the human race in its more general and more universal aspect. It seems to stop at this particular chapter and to look upon the human race less in its larger and universal aspect than in the national aspect of the children of God. The character of the history of the people of God is manifested in the character of the person who founded that history, and with whom the national history begins. I need not remind you that nations catch and are infected with the spirit of their founder. The history of the Israelitish people is rather the history of saintliness, than what we understand by a secular or profane history, and it had its root and foundation in him who was called the Father of the Faithful. I. Abraham's Career. — A most remarkable career was that of Abraham. He was trained by what? By a process of separation ; the giving up this, and the foregoing that. That was the keynote of Abraham's life ; one time called to do this, another time called to forego that; the sign early laid upon him of the Cross. He leaves his home without a moment of delay, no hesi- tation about it, not even knowing where he was going. And there was vouchsafed to him for his encourage- ment a special manifestation, he was promised a land, a seed, and a blessing as his reward ; great inheritance, 38 Vv. 10, 11. GENESIS XIII Ver. 11. abounding posterity, and a remarkable influence. He sets out on this journey toward the promised land, which he never regarded as his real resting-place or home. It is rather typical, not of heaven, but of the visibleChurch,and of the life of individualChristians in the world ; and his experience was that his life must be more or less migratory and wandering till he reached his home. The Canaanite — it is an expressive passage — was still in the land, therefore it was not heaven. He pitched his tent as we might pitch a tent or mar- quee in our fields, as you see gipsies pitch them when- even they find a night's lodging or resting-place; plain, homely, but enough for the purpose. II. The Aitar Built. — And side by side with this simple dwelling-place, easily removed, ever reminding him that the call might come to take it up and go somewhere else, he built an altar, rude, rough in its way, and there it was that he called upon the Lord. He built it as a spontaneous act of gratitude that should tell the passers-by of mercies countless that he had received. It was rough and rude, and, simple as it was, it was not divorced violently from homely, common-day life. Now what lies at the bottom of this simple act of the Father of the Faithful? It was the expression of what, I believe, is a profound and unquenchable spiritual instinct that seeks after God. The instinct of man has led him to localize God, sometimes in a shrine, sometimes in a dark grave. But you know that impressions pass very quickly away from us, and feelings very soon evapor- ate. Religion- — it is not superstition, but religion as we call it, a comprehensive term — is kept in mind and made more real to us by buildings like this church, which you never mistake for anything else; and by certain rites and ceremonies and forms, which are the channels approved by generations of men, in which devotion flows. I do not say that churchgoing is religion, but I think that religion would die out without our churches. The very architecture tells the passer-by that it is something dedicated to God and to His glory. And we still believe that the strength of this great nation really lies, not in her armaments and not in her standing armies, but in her godliness, in her national piety, in her righteous- ness, in her reverence for God's holy day, in her de- vout regard for churches, and in that godliness which fetches its inspiration from all that we learn and hear and receive in these earthly temples. References. — XII. 6, 7. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 82. XII. 8. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 84. XII. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 91. F. W. Robert- son, Notes on Genesis, p. 33. R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 181. S. Leathes, Studies in Genesis, p. 96. XIII. 1. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 91. XIII. 1-13.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Gene- sis, p. 85. ' Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, etc. — Genesis xiii. io, n. The lesson to be gained from the history of Abraham and Lot is obviously this — that nothing but a clear apprehension of things unseen, a simple trust in God's promises, and the greatness of mind thence arising, can make us act above the world — indifferent, or almost so, to its comforts, enjoyments, and friendships, or in other words, that its goods corrupt the common run even of religious men who possess them. . . . Could we not easily persuade ourselves to support Antichrist, I will not say at home, but at least abroad, rather than we should lose one portion of the freights which ' the ships of Tarshish bring us "... . Surely, if we are to be saved, it is not by keeping ourselves just above the line of reprobation, and living without any anxiety and struggle to serve God with a perfect heart. No one, surely, can be a Christian who makes his worldly interests his chief end of action. — J. H. Newman. LOT'S CHOICE 'Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot jour- neyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.' — Genesis xiii. II. In the story of patriarchal times we see how the pos- session of property brought with it new social problems for the primitive family. In this case the difficulty began not with the principals, but with their retainers. Before the difficulty struck the masters, the servants were at war. Jealousy about respective rights, and emulation to secure the better bargain crept in. Abram with his calm wisdom saw that it would be better to avoid all such unseemly quarrels by volun- tarily separating. Abram with generous disinter- estedness offers Lot his choice. ' If thou wilt take the left hand then I will go to the right; or if thou wilt take the right hand then I will go to the left.' It was quite like Abram to do this, in keeping with his noble nature. I. The presence of moral greatness either raises us or dwarfs us, either prompts us to rise to the occa- sion or tempts us to take advantage of it. Lot lost his choice of meeting Abram's generosity. Worldly advantage was the first element in his choice. He judged according to the world's judgment; he judged by the eye. His heart was allured by the beauty and fertility of the plain. On the other side the gain was limited and hardly won. II. Now the power of the temptation to Lot, as it is the power of it to us, was that the good of the one alternative was present, while the good of the other seemed distant. The one could be had at sight; the other only through faith. The seduction of the world is that it is here, palpable, to be had now. To exer- cise self-control for the sake of a future blessing, to put off a present good for a prospective good needs strength of character and will, and, above all, faith. III. Faith is the refusal of the small for the sake of the large. Worldly wisdom is not wisdom; it is folly, the blind grasping at what is within reach. Lot thought he was doing a wise thing in making the choice he did, but a share in the wealth of Sodom was a pitiful substitute for a place in Abram's company and a share in Abram's thoughts and faith. And the 39 Ver. 12. GENESIS XII I., XIV Ver. 18. end was a ruined home, a desolate life, and a broken heart. — H. Black, Edinburgh Sermons, p. 33. References. — XIII. 11. — G. A. Towler, From Heart to Heart, p. 1. XIII. 11-14. — O. Perren, Revival Sermons, p. 242. ABRAHAM AND LOT— A CONTRAST 'And Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.' — Genesis xiii. 12. Abraham's life is characterized throughout by great simplicity of motive. He is a man called of God, and true to the heavenly vision — a ' pilgrim of the invis- ible,' as Robertson of Brighton called him, laying by his faith and high surrender of himself the foundation of a kingdom from which the prophet and the psalm- ist and the apostle and our Lord Himself were to come. You get a glimpse into the inner soul of Abraham in this chapter. When it comes to a quarrel between his servants and Lot's, and the younger man is scheming how he can promote his own interests by striking a good bargain, Abraham betrays on the whole subj ect a lofty indifference. He is so sure about God that he feels it matters very little whether he goes to the right hand or to the left. He does not need to stoop to any mean or grasping course to get what God has promised him. And although in this difference with Lot, as the older man and the leader of the enterprise, he might have claimed the first choice, he instead surrenders it. I. In God's Company. — I find then that acting as he did Abraham got the best of both worlds. For one thing when he left Lot he went in God's com- pany. As always when a man does right, even at a sacrifice, he saw the heavens opened and heard God speaking. And then in making this lofty unselfish choice, Abraham discovered that he had not lost his inheritance, but rather come to the gate of it. Abraham sought heavenly riches and lo ! the wealth of the world lay at his feet. II. The Divided Heart — Lot is the type of a man, who tried in a very mistaken use of the phrase, to make the best of both worlds, and in the end got the good out of neither. You see him at every point trying to serve two masters, fearing God and yet pitching his tent towards Sodom. If you were to sum Lot up you might say he was an unsuccessful religious man, and an unsuccessful worldling, neither satisfied on the one side of his being nor the other. Lot's was a dissatisfied life; let me try to make the statement good. For on the one side his religion was spoiled by his worldliness. When you see him in Sodom he is sitting in the gate to dispense hospitality, perhaps to administer justice. He vexes his righteous soul at the depravity that goes on about him. He is looked upon by the lawless Sodomites as in some ways a moral censor; for you remember they say, ' This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge'. But you feel at once that Lot differs from Abraham in that he did not make religious principle the guiding star of his life. Right feeling, for instance, should have prompted him to refuse Abraham's generous offer of the first choice. But he did not refuse to take an unfair advantage of his kinsman. Then he pitched his tent towards Sodom, risking for worldly gear the defilement of his family. III. A Lifeof Double Failure. — Then on the other side Lot's worldliness was spoiled by his religion. Another man might have let go the reins, and sur- rendered himself with whole-hearted zest to the sordid and vicious life of Sodom. But Lot could not do that. And why? Because following him like a spectre was the memory of the days that were gone, the uplifting communion with Abraham and with God. And so he remained in Sodom, not entering into its life, uneasy «and disturbed, vexing his righteous soul from day to day but without the moral courage to leave the city, till he was thrust out by the mercy of heaven ' saved yet so as by fire'. — J. McColl, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv. p. 170. Refebences. — XIII. 12. — W. J. Dawson, The Comrade of Christ, p. 243. XIII. 12-13.— R. C. Trench, Sermons New and Old, p. 258. XIII. 18-20.— J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (2nd Series), p. 22. C. Stanford, Symbols of Christ, p. 3. XIII. — F. W. Robertson,2Votes on Genesis, p. 39. XIV. 13. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scrip- ture— Genesis, p. 93. XIV. 15, 16. — J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 285. XIV. 17-24. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2523; ibid., vol. xlix. No. 2814. MELCHISEDEK THE UNCANONICAL ' He was the priest of the most high God.' — Genesis xiv. 18. A deeply veiled figure. The force of the figure lies in its background ; its mystery in its mean surround- ings. Melchisedek was a Canaanite. His birthplace was uncanonical. He ruled with wonderfully des- potic power. What gave this man such a marvellous power? His personal sanctity. Abraham represents earth ; Melchisedek is the High Priest of heaven. I. Where did Melchisedek get that priesthood which he was certainly credited with possessing. Melchisedek was the earliest man of his class, and was therefore not ordained with hands. The first priest of God in the history of the world must have come from a house not made with hands. II. The beginning of every ecclesiastical chain is something not ecclesiastical — something human. The churches of the Old World each began in a human soul. In Melchisedek within the precincts of one heart was laid the nucleus of all that sanctity which attached to the patriarchal line. There are three orders of priesthood in the Bible — the Patri- archal, the Jewish, and the Christian, and at the beginning of each dispensation there stands an in- dividual life whose ordination is not made with hands. The origin of the patriarchal dispensation is the holiness of one man — the man Melchisedek. The origin of the Jewish dispensation is the holiness of one man — Moses. The origin of the Christian dis- pensation is from the human side the holiness of one man — the man Christ Jesus. 40 Ver. 20. GENESIS XIV.-XVI Ver. 13. III. The point of comparison between Melchisedek and Christ is just the uncanonical manner of their ordination. Looking at the matter from the human side, and abstracting the attention from theological prepossessions there is nothing more remarkable than the uncanonical aspect of the Son of Man. He has obtained it ' after the manner of Melchisedek '. Un- consecrated he became the source of consecration. — G. Matheson, Representative Men of the Bible, p. 43. Reference. — XIV. 18-20. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 589. CHRIST THE TRUE JOSEPH 'The good of all the land of Egypt is yours.'— Genesis xiv. 20. Consider (1) What is the true principle of inter- pretation to be applied to a particular class of so- called ' types '; and (2) What is the relation in which Christ's people have a right to consider themselves as standing to that outer world, which in some schools of theology is described as ' their spiritual enemy ' and in all schools is allowed to be the sphere of their trial. I. In what sense do we use the words, when caught by, and gazing on, some old saintly or heroic character, whose deeds are chronicled in the history of the people of God, we say instinctively ' Here is a plain type of the Lord Jesus Christ ' ? What do we mean by this manner of speaking? What sort of relation between type and antitype do our words imply ? ' Whatso- ever things are true,' says the Gospels' most renowned preacher, ' whatsoever things are honest, whotsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise think on these things'. Think of them as the diadem of grace that crowned the head of Him to whom the Father ' gave not the Spirit by measure,' Who made for Himself one glorious crown of all these precious jewels and set it upon His head that all men might behold its beauty, and Who now weareth it on His throne in the heavenly place for evermore. So He was the perfect man, the 'recapitulation' of humanity, the incarnation — the prototype rather than the anti- type— of all that men have ever seen or dreamed of, or pictured to themselves in fancy of the heroic, the pure, the altogether lovely and spotless, the godlike in man. II. ' The good of all the land of Egypt is yours.' So spake Joseph to his kindred ; so speaks Christ to us who are members of His body. We dwell in Egypt, and all its good things are ours, we are not taken out of the world ; but by providences and graces, inscru- table in their processes, palpable only in their results, are kept from its evil and suffering, bidden to enjoy its good. For it is possible ' to use the world as not abusing it ' ; and not only so but to use and be the, better for the use. A Christian man may come in contact with what is loathsomest and foulest, and instead of being defiled he shall be the purer, the saintlier, the nearer and the liker God. Egypt is Egypt still: a land lying under a curse; visited at times with plagues; where idols are worshipped with more zeal than God. But if I am Christ's this Egypt is mine. Its curse shall not scathe me. Its plague- spots shall not infect me. While then I assert un- falteringly my claim to all the good things of Egypt, I shall limit myself in the use of them by three main considerations: (1) By my neighbour's good; (2) By the possibility of misconstruction ; (3) By a wholesome fear of becoming secularized. I know not that we need any other safeguards ; and I do not find that the Gospel has multiplied restraints. A few great guiding principles are better than many subtle, fine- drawn rules. — J. Fraser, University Sermons, p. 18. Reference. — XIV. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abra- ham, p. 111. Genesis xv. ' Read the fifteenth chapter with extreme care. If you have a good memory, learn it by heart from beginning to end; it is one of the most sublime and pregnant passages in the entire compass of ancient literature.' — Ruskin, Fors Clarigeva (lxiv). References. — XV. 1. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 120. J. Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 341. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2814. XV. 2. — J. Kelly, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii. p. 165. XV. 5, 6. — Archbishop Magee, Penny Pulpit, No. 501. XV. 5-18. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 101. XV. 1. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture —Genesis, p. 111. XV. 6.— B. W. Shalders, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv. p. 235. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 844. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 116. XV. 8. — H. Woodcock, Sermon Outlines, pp. 87, 92. XV. 8, 9.— G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 278. XV. 11. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 420; ibid. vol. xxxiii. No. 1993. XV. 16. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. liii. No. 3043. XV. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 129. A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE AS REVEALED IN THE GOSPEL 'Thou God seest me.' — Genesis xvi. 13. God beholds thee individually, whoever thou art. He ' calls the by thy name '. He sees thee, and under- stands thee, as He made thee. He knows what is in thee, all thy own peculiar feelings and thoughts, thy dispositions and likings, thy strength and thy weakness. He views thee in thy day of rejoicing, and thy day of sorrow. He sympathizes in thy hopes and thy temptations. He interests Himself in all thy anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fall- ings of thy spirit. He has numbered the very hairs of thy head and the cubits of thy stature. He compasses thee round and bears thee in his arms; He takes thee up and sets thee down. He notes thy very countenance, whether smiling or in tears, whether healthful or sickly. He looks tenderly upon thy hands and thy feet; He hears thy voice, the beating of thy heart, and thy very breathing. Thou dost not love thyself better than He loves thee. Thou canst not shrink from pain more than He dislikes thy bearing it; and if He puts it on thee, it is as thou; wilt put it on thyself, if thou art wise, for a greater 41 Ver. 13. GENESIS XVI., XVII Ver. 18. good afterwards. . . . What is man, what are we, what am I, that the Son of God should be so mindful of me ? What am I, that He should have raised me from almost a devil's nature to that of an Angel's? that He should have changed my soul's original constitu- tion, new-made me, who from my youth up have been a transgressor, and should Himself dwell personally in this very heart of mine, making me His temple? What am I, that God the Holy Ghost should enter into me, and draw up my thoughts heavenward, ' with plaints unutterable ? ' — J. H. Newman. THE PRESENCE OF GOD 'Thou God seest me.'— Genesis xvi. 13. A poor Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar, spoke these words. Her life had become unendurable, and so she ran away into the wilderness, and an angel from God came to her and told her to return. Hagar's words teach us : — I. A lesson of God's watchful Providence. These words of Hagar are a special help to us: — ■ (a) When we are exposed to great temptations. (6) In any time of trouble or sorrow or struggle. (c) In time of prayer. (d) When we have to make difficult decisions in our life. II. God's presence ought to be the great joy of our life here, as it will be in our life hereafter. Heaven is simply life in God's Presence, and the best prepara- tion we can make will be to cultivate the recollection of that Presence now. — A. G. Mortimer, Stories from Genesis, p. 127. References. — XVI. 13. — H. Ranken, Christian World Pulpit, 1800, p. 276. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii. No. 85 ; ibid. vol. xxxi. No. 1869. XVI. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 129. XVII. 1.— A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons, vol. i. p. 85. A. Martin, Penny Pulpit, No. 878. XVII. 1, 2. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 845; ibid. vol. xviii. No. ..082. XVII. 1-9.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 117. XVII. 5. — J. Morgan, Penny Pulpit, No. 382. GOD THE GIVER ' I will give . . . ' — Genesis xvii. 8. ' I will give.' That is the text. It is found in Genesis, and therefore in the right place ; it is heard in the Apocalypse, and therefore the great Amen cannot be far off. Let us see how the river runs, and walk by it, as it were, hand in hand with God. I. The Lord had to incarnate Himself in little phrases and small toy meanings in order to get at man's imagination, so He says in Genesis xvii, 8, ' I will give unto thee . . . land '. Do not put a full- stop after ' land '. That is the poorest and meanest of His gifts, and would be poorer and meaner still if it did not carry with it all the other gifts by implica- tion, suggestion, far-flashing indication of an opening universe. But the land is God's to give. The land never belonged to any one but God. It is something to know that God gives men land, and clay out of which to make bricks, and quarries out of which to dig palaces, and forests out of which to bring navies and homes of beauty. II. ' I will give you rain.' Of course ; having given us the land, He could not withhold the rain. What is the land without rain? — dust unshaped into humanity and stewardship and responsibility — a poor waste, nothing but dust, that cannot grow a flower. Now I feel to be warming towards this great notion of the One-Giver and All-Giver. ' I will give you rain ' — soft water, the kind of water the roots like and pine for. Never dissociate God from land and from water; they are both His, He only can give them in any sense that will bring with it satis- faction. There is a way of appeasing hunger that does not touch the deeper inner hunger of the other self — that excites a man and mocks him every day. III. ' I will give thee ' - — what more can He give? He has given us the land, He has given us the rain, He says, 'I will give thee riches and wealth and honour'. Is there a fountain of honour in the universe? Yes, and if we seek it not, we shall find it sooner; if we do not go after riches and wealth and honour, the poor weazened things will come to us. IV. Now He begins a higher style of talk. He was condescending all the while to get at us, so lowly was our place in the pit. Now we are coming nearer to the light. He says, ' I will give you pastors according to Mine heart ' (Jer. in. 15) — bits of God's own heart, fragments of His infinite love, souls that have received the kiss and will impart it to despairing spirits. V. He is coming very near us now. What can follow such gifts — land and rain and riches and pastors ? He said, ' I will give unto thee a son '. ' For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.' So loved — that He gave. That is the way to love. He lives to give. That is love. If you take all in and allow nothing to flow out you will one day find that your great gathering of water has burst the cistern or the deep reservoir and has gone. You come in the morning and say, ' I have an abundance of water, but I will not give you any, but you may look at it and see how rich I am ; this is the reservoir, walk up this green slope, and I will show you what is worth more than crystal.' We say, ' I do not see it, where is it ?' ' Wait a moment and you will see it, over this little hillock.' And we climb the hillock, and look, and the water, the gathered, stored water, kept from the poor and the needy and the thirsty, has gone. God will take it all up again into His sky and turn it into rainbows and into showers and pour it upon worthier receivers. They are storing poverty who are storing gold with- out God. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. v. p. 242. Genesis xvii. 18. ' Abraham looked upon the vigorous, bold, brilliant young Ishmael, and said appealingly to God : " O that Ishmael might live before Thee ! " But it cannot be ; the promises are to conduct, to conduct only. And so, again, we in like manner behold, long after Greece has perished, a brilliant successor of Greece, the Renascence, present herself with high hopes. . . . And 42 Vv. 10-33. GENESIS XVII L, XXI Ver. 10. all the world salutes with pride and joy the Renascence, and prays to Heaven : " O that Ishmael might live before Thee ! " Surely the future belongs to this new-comer.' — M. Arnold in Literature and Dogma. References. — XVII. 18. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — -Genesis, p. 123. XVIII. 1. — Expositor (3rd Series), vol. ii. p. 203; Hid. vol. iii. p. 69. XVIII. 16- 33. — -A. Maclarer, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis p. 129. XVIII. 19.— G. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit, 5 Nov. 1890. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 185. XVIII. 22. — C. J. Vaughan, Harrow School Sermons, p. 371. XVIII. 25. — Bishop W. Ingram, Under the Dome. p. 219. W. R. Inge, Faith and Knowledge, p. 57. Professor Story, Christian World Pulpit, 1891, p. 88. XVIII.— J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 135. XVIII. 25. — J. Vaughan, Sermons (15th Series), p. 117. ABRAHAM'S INTERCESSION Genesis xviii. 16-33. When Scott the commentator was dying, we are told that he spoke much to those around him on the way in which his prayers for others had been answered. He thought he had failed less in the duty of inter- cession than in any other. Whether that be true of Scott or not, it is surely very true of Abraham. His nearness to God is never more apparent than when he intercedes for Sodom. Meyer notes these features of his prayer : ( 1 ) It was lonely prayer. ' He waited till on all the wide plateau there was no living man to overhear.' (2) It was prolonged prayer. ' We do not give the sun a chance to thaw us. (3) It was very humble prayer, and (4) It was persevering prayer. ' In point of fact God was drawing him on.' Reference. — XVIII. 17-33. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2400. Genesis xviii. 32. Burke in his ' Observations on a late Publication in- tituled " The Present State of the Nation," ' remarks that the author, ' after the character he has given of [England's] inhabitants of all ranks and classes, has great charity in caring much about them ; and, indeed, no less hope, in being of opinion that such a detest- able nation can ever become the care of Providence. He has not found even five good men in our devoted city.' References. — XIX. 12. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 601. XIX. 14. — C. Perren, Revival Sermons, p. 216. XIX. 14, 15, 17, 24-26.— R. S. Soanes, Sermons for the Young, p. 83. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 120. XIX. 15-26. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — ■ Genesis, p. 142. XIX. 15. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. Ii. No. 2944. XIX. 16.— W. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons, vol. i. p. 222. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 789. XIX. 17. — J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (1st Series) p. 200. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches, p. 71. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2400; vol. x. No. 550. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 119. XIX. 20.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol v. No. 248. XIX. 23.— Ibid. vol. xlv. No. 2642. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 111. XIX. 26. — A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons, vol. ii. p. 241. C. Perren, Outline Ser- mons, p. 286. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2445. XIX. 27, 28.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 602. XIX.— F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 43. XX. 11. — J. Bald- win Brown, The Sunday Afternoon, p. 402. XX. J, Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 151. SARAH THE STEADFAST Genesis xxi. What is that quality in the mind of Sarah which lies below all other qualities, and which subsists when others change? It may be expressed in one word — steadfastness. The abiding secret of this woman's greatness is her own abidingness. I. Sarah in the romantic stage. When the scene first opens in the married life of Abraham and Sarah, they are having an experience which their romance had not bargained for — the poverty of the land. For a married pair I can imagine no duller experience. This must have been Sarah's first real sorrow — not the famine in the land, but the famine in Abraham's soul. She sees her ideal husband in a new light. She has seen him in Ur of the Chaldees flaming with the poetic impulse to abandon himself for the sake of humanity. She beholds him in the land of Canaan with his fire cooled down. True he is under a cloud, and the cloud distresses her; but her eye looks beyond the cloud to the normal shining of her husband's soul. II. She has need of all her hope; for meantime the gloom deepens. The complaint which has come to Abraham is one which seems occasionally to beset high-strung natures — a reaction of the nerves producing extreme timidity. He says to Sarah, ' We are going into a country where I shall suffer by your beauty. Men will envy me the possession of you; they will lament that you are wedded, bound; they will seek to kill me that you may be free. You can save me if you will. Pretend that you are already free.' This is the eclipse in Abraham's heart of the wifely relation itself. A more terrible strain upon a woman's conjugal love is not to be conceived. Yet this noble woman stood the strain. III. The cloud clears from Canaan, and Abraham and Sarah return. Years pass, and for Abraham prosperity dawns. But there throbs in Sarah's heart a pulse of pain. There is as yet no heir. She says to her husband, ' Take my slave Hagar as a second wife '. She says to herself, ' If an heir should come through Hagar he will still be my son, not hers '. But Sarah has miscalculated something. She has said that even maternity will not make Hagar less her slave. In body perhaps not: but in spirit it will break her bonds. It is essential to Sarah's peace that Hagar should be not a person but a thing. The combat ends in favour of Sarah. Mother and son are sent out into the desert. Sarah has purified her home. She has relighted her nuptial fire. — G. Matheson, Representative Women of the Bible, p. 55. ISHMAEL THE OUTCAST 'Cast out this bondswoman and her son.'— Genesis xxi. 10. Israel has from the very first provided a place for the pariah — has opened a door of entrance to the 43 GENESIS XXII man whom she has herself turned out. Ishmael is the first pariah, the first outcast from society. To any man who had breathed the patriarchal atmosphere the expulsion from that atmosphere was death in the desert. Expulsion from the patriarchal fold was not necessarily a change of land at all: the outcast could live in sight of his former home. But the sting lay in the fact that the brotherhood itself was broken. I. What brought Ishmael into this exile? As in nearly all cases of social ostracism he owes it partly to his misfortune — for an Eastern— of being an un- conventional man. The spirit of the age is at variance with his spirit. He set up the authority of his individual conscience in opposition to the use and want of the whole community. What was that individual conviction for which Ishmael strove? Ishmael saw Hagar, his actual mother, in the posi- tion of a menial to his adopted mother. He saw her subjected to daily indignities. He listened to her assertions of a right to be equal to Sarah, of her claim to be treated as the wife of Abraham. II. Then something happened. A real heir was born to Sarah. Ishmael was supplanted. All his hopes were withered. He seems to have thrown off the mask which had hitherto concealed his irritation. His tone became mocking, satirical. He preferred a life of independent poverty to a life of luxurious vassalage. He panted to be free. The wrath of Sarah was kindled. She moves her hand and says ' Go ! ' and Hagar and Ishmael issue forth from the patriarchal home to return no more. When they reach the desert their supply of water is exhausted. Hagar betook herself to prayer. It was not the God of Israel she communed with. It was her own God. But he answered her. The answer comes in the form of an inward peace. It sent no super- natural vision, because that was not needed. The means of refuge lay within the limits of the natural. The well was there, had always been there. What was wanted was a mental calm adequate to the re- cognition of it. III. But the grand thing was the moral bearing of the fact. It had an historical significance. It de- clared that God had a place for the pariah. It pro- claimed that the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac was still the God of Egypt and the God of Hagar. God is larger than all our creeds, and higher than all our theories. — G. Matheson, Representa- tive Men of the Bible, p. 1. References. — XXI. 6. — Spurgeon, Morning by Morn- ing, p. 1C7. XXI. 16. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 974. XXI. 17. — C. Bosanquet, Tender Grass for the Lambs, p. 1. J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children (5th Series), p. 105. XXI. 19. — Spurgeon, Sermons^ vol. six. No. 1123; ibid. vol. xxv. No. 1461. XXI.- — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 14. F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 50. THE TEMPTATION OF ABRAHAM Genesis xxii. This narrative has been an awful difficulty to many. Some, who have not quite cast the Bible away as God's Word, yet go near to saying that we cannot see God's Word in this passage. It is said by some that the whole incident must be explained by ideas in Abraham's mind, suggested by the practice of human sacrifices around him. Abraham thought on these till the feeling arose that his God also de- manded nothing short of the life of his best beloved treasure; then this feeling mastered him as a pas- sionate resolve, till he all but slew his son. Such a view I refuse to accept. I am quite sure it is not the view meant to be given by the narrative, and I am quite sure that the narrative had the ap- proval of our Lord Jesus Christ, as a true account of His Father's will and work. So I am sure that, somehow, God supernatural ly conveyed to Abraham His command, as the absolute Lord of the life of His creatures ; that Abraham obeyed not his own feel- ings, but that command ; that he was supernaturally prevented from the final act, when his willingness to do even it at his Lord's word had been shown, and that his whole conduct received a glorious crown of approval, then and there, from heaven. All this I steadfastly believe ; but I do not wonder at the difficulties many hearts have felt over the story. Now here note some of the ' messages ' of Abra- ham's temptation. I. First, it was obviously a case where ' test ' and ' enticement ' might, and no doubt did, beset Abra- ham at the same time. His heavenly Friend was testing him. His dark Enemy is not mentioned; Genesis has no clear reference to him at all after Chapter III. But we may be sure he was watching his occasion, and would whisper deep into Abraham's soul the thought that if this call was from the Lord, the Lord was an awfully ' austere ' Master ; would not some other Deity, after all, be more kind and tolerant ? II. Then, we see where the essence of the awful test lay. Abraham was asked, in effect, two questions through it. He was asked whether he absolutely resigned himself to the Lord's ownership, and also whether he absolutely trusted his Owner's truth and love. The two questions were not identical, but they were twined close together. And the response of Abraham, by the grace of God in his heart, to both questions was a ' yes ' which sounds on for ever through all the generations of the followers of the faith of Abraham. He so acted as to say, in effect, ' I am Thine, and all mine is Thine, utterly and for ever '. And this he did, not as just submitting in stern silence to the inevitable, but ' in faith '. He was quite sure that ' He was faithful who had pro- mised.' He was sure of this because of His character ; because he knew God, and knowing Him, loved Him. So he overcame. So he received the crown; he was blessed himself, and a blessing to the world. III. Are we ever ' proved ' in ways which in the least remind us of Abraham upon Moriah? Is it very strange, very dreadful, very arbitrary, to our poor aching eyes? Let us remember whose we are, and whom we trust, because we know Him. We 44 Vv. 1, 2. GENESIS XXII Vv. 2-18. belong to Him by purchase, by conquest, by sur- render. Therefore all our ' belongings ' belong to Him, in the sense that He has perfect right to de- tach them from us if He thinks it well. And we rely on Him to whom we belong. We know that not only are His rights absolute, but so also is His love, which abideth, is Himself. The Divine command to Abraham, not merely to surrender Isaac but to kill him, is of course the mystery of the story. I believe it is enough to say that the absolute Lord of the lives of Abraham and of Isaac had the right not only to call for Isaac's life, but to call for it so — having already trained Abraham up to a full reliance on His character. But we should also observe that the command would appeal to a human fact of that age, and of ages after ; the fact that family was then so constituted that the child was regarded as the property of the parent. In the full light of the Gospel, while every filial duty is deepened and glorified, such a constitution is not possible. We may be sure that no such command will be given in the Christian age. — Bishop H. C. G. Moule. ABRAHAM'S FAITH 'And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham : and he said, Be- hold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.' — Genesis xxii. i, 2. I. The word tempt here means try. To those dwelling out of the Kingdom of Faith such a com- mand as this must appear strange indeed, one exact- ing from a father, it seems so contrary to nature, so opposed to the very feelings sown in the heart of man; and doubtless multitudes think the same of the entire plan of salvation, as also of affliction, or trials of any sort. But there are those who have gone through difficulties, and sufferings, and have felt, however painful the trials, yet were they ac- companied with brightening, purifying influences ; they drew those tried ones nearer to God, in propor- tion as they had faith and grace to bear. II. The conduct of men in general is influenced by reason, by feeling, by interest, but in this act of Abraham's we find all these laid aside. Abraham did not act from any of these motives, but from a principle which was in opposition to them all. Therefore when the command came, it might have startled him perhaps, but he did not criticize it, he did not sit in judgment on it, he knew where it came from, it must be right, and it must be obeyed. III. Not only were Abraham's reason and feelings opposed to his faith, but also his highly cherished interests. In Isaac were wrapped up the father's fond affections, all his worldly hopes and prospects; through him he was taught to expect that his descen- dants should become a mighty nation, that from him should spring a race of kings, yea, the Messiah, the King of kings ; yet when the command came to slay that son, faith led him to obey it. IV. Besides Abraham being set before us in this Scripture as a noble example of faith and obedience to God's commands, there is another lesson which this narrative seems evidently intended to teach. We have here a lively type and illustration of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ for the sins of men. The whole history is, in several parts, a sort of breath- ing picture, prefiguring by actual persons and actual sufferings the great sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross. — E. J. Brewster, Scripture Characters, p. 20. References. — XXII. 1.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vols. xxii. xxiii. No. 37. XXII. 1-14.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 152. XXII. 1-19. — J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 19. J. J. S. Perowne, Sermons, p. 332. ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 'Thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest.' — Genesis xxii. 2. Isaac is distinctively a female type. He reveals human nature in a passive attitude — precisely that attitude which the old world did not like. I. The life of Isaac is from beginning to end a suffering in private. His was that form of sacrifice which does not show, which wins no reputation for heroism. II. Our first sight of him is the sight of an unre- sisting victim on an altar of sacrifice, but his attitude is not that of a mere victim. It is that of acqui- escence. In the deepest sense Isaac has bound him- self to the altar. He has submitted to self-effacement for the sake of his family. That submission is the type of his whole life. III. Most probably this self-effacement on the part of Isaac did not come from a quiet nature. His sacrifice takes the form of personal divestiture. It is all inward, but the man who can give his will has given everything. His was the surrender and not the crushing of a will. The crushing of a will brings vacancy, but the surrender of a will is itself an exer- cise of will power. — G. Matheson, The Representa- tive Men of the Bible, p. 131. References. — XXII. 2. — J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 191. C. D. Bell, Bills that Bring Peace, p. 45. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No. 868. THE OFFERING OF ISAAC 'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.'— Genesis xxii. 2-18. Certain features of this severe trial closely resemble some of the operations of Divine providence known to ourselves. I. We are often exposed to great trials without any reason being assigned for their infliction. When such trials are accepted in a filial spirit, the triumph of faith is complete. II. Even in our severest trials, in the very crisis and agony of our chastisement, we have hope in the delivering Mercy of God. This is often so in human life ; the inward contradicts the outward. Faith substitutes a greater fact for a small one. 45 Ver. 4. GENESIS XXII Ver. 4. III. We are often made to feel the uttermost bitterness of a trial in its foretelling and anticipation. Sudden calamities are nothing compared with the lingering death which some men have to die. IV. Filial obedience on our part has ever been followed by special tokens of God's approval. We ourselves have in appropriate degrees realized this same overflowing and all-comforting blessing of God in return for our filial obedience. V. The supreme lesson which we should learn from this history is that almighty God, in the just exer- cise of His sovereign and paternal authority, demands the complete subjugation of our will to His own. We are distinctly called to give up everything, to sink our will in God's ; to be no longer our own ; to sum up every prayer with, ' Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done '. — Joseph Parker, The Con- temporary Pulpit, vol. v. p. 154. THE BACKGROUNDS OF LIFE 'Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off.' — Genesis xxii. 4. Abraham was on his way to offer up Isaac, and ' the place afar off ' was the mountain on which he had been told to perform the sacrifice. Let me put aside at once any consideration of the object of his journey and any discussion of the disputed question of the locality. I am taking the words of the text as simply suggesting the idea of a distant view closed in by a mountain range. Views of this kind are common in Palestine. There are few parts of the country where the horizon is not bounded by a mountain outline, and though the heights are not great when compared with the higher Alps, yet the shapes and the structures are those of mountains, not hills. Our personal memories of mountain scenery in other lands are enough to give us an idea of the view which lay before Abraham. We think of distant, delicate, changing tints, purple or blue or grey, seen across a foreground of plain or valley; we think of the charm of what Ruskin calls mountain gloom and mountain glory. That was not, of course, the way in which the Jews of the Old Testament re- garded their mountains. It was not love of their beauty which they felt; it was rather a sense of their awfulness. They associated mountain heights, as in the case of Mount Sinai, with the immediate presence of God. ' He that treadeth on the high places of the earth,' says the prophet Amos, ' the Lord the God of Hosts is His name.' If this belief inspired a feeling of awe about mountains, from another point of view it was not devoid of comfort. To the Psalmist the mountain horizons of his father- land suggested the assurance of God's protection. ' I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains from whence cometh my help.' ' As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from this time forth and for evermore.' We have all felt, I suppose, the beauty of the Psalmist's simile. May we not claim that it still has a meaning of value for us ? Let us think for a little about the mountain backgrounds of life. Our lives are like a great landscape; each life has its own fore- ground and background; the foreground full of detail, full of the movement of our daily work, looming much larger on our sight than the distance beyond it, pressing upon us calls of business that we cannot put off, keeping our thoughts immersed in the ceaseless hurry and hustle of our professional career, calling continually for our immediate atten- tion to this or that thing that has to be done. Such is the foreground of life. And then behind all this multiplicity of detail and movement come the wider horizons, the larger aspirations,the deeper convictions, the eternal truths, the unchangeable principles to which we must continually lift up our eyes if our life is to have any general plan or purpose. These are the mountain backgrounds. Both foreground and background are equally indispensable. No life can be complete that ignores either of them. But there is this difference between them. Men as a rule are naturally inclined to pay far more attention to the foreground than to the background. There are indeed sluggish or visionary natures which are content to stand aside from the ordinary activities of life, but these are exceptional. Most men find their immediate daily duties so engrossing that they are apt to neglect the view beyond. The mountain distances become blurred or blotted out. That is a great loss — how great a loss our Lord teaches us Himself by His own example. We cannot suppose that He, in His busy daily life, ever really put God out of His thoughts ; always He must have had with Him the sense of His Heavenly Father's presence. Yet none the less He felt the need of going up into a mountain apart to pray. The idea that life is like a landscape is a mere metaphor of course, but it may be helpful and sug- gestive. Let me try to give one or two illustrations. I. There is the background of the inner personal- ity, for instance. Behind the foreground of conduct comes the background of character. The teaching of Jesus covers the whole range of this spiritual land- scape. He says, ' Keep My commandments ' — that is the rule of conduct. But He also says (and we feel that it is a still deeper saying) ' Ye must be born again '. That is the need of regeneration of character. These two sayings are closely connected. Conduct and character must be in harmony, or there can be no real sincerity of life. Many lives, we all know, never attain this sincerity. That means a discrep- ancy, a want of harmony between foreground and background. II. Then, again, there is the background of prayer. Every true prayer, it has been said, has its back- ground and its foreground. The foreground of prayer is the intense immediate longing for some blessing which seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have ; the background of prayer is the quiet, earnest desire that the will of God, whatever it may be, should be done. Examine from this point of view our Lord's perfect prayer at Gethsemane. In 46 Ver. 4. GENESIS XXII Vv. 10, 11, 12. front we see the intense longing that the cup of agony and death might pass away from Him; but behind there stands the strong, steadfast desire that the Will of God should be done. Take away either of these conditions and the prayer becomes less per- fect. Leave out the foreground (I quote the words of a great preacher) — let there be no expression of the wish of him who prays — and there is left a pure submission which is almost fatalism. Leave out the background — let there be no acceptance of the Will of God — and the prayer is only a manifestation of self-will, an ill-regulated petition for personal grati- fication, without reference to any higher law. It is just this background of prayer on which we need to keep our eyes fixed. III. Take again the background of Divine truth. What do we see as we look down on the foreground »of our lives in these days of controversy ? There lies before us a series of battle-scenes full of noise and confusion — the conflict of parties within our Church, the conflict of Church and Church, the conflict of Christian and non-Christian belief, the conflict of religion and agnosticism. We must lift up our eyes to the still, solemn mountain background which rises far away beyond the scene of conflict. There, on the distant horizon of our lives, we shall find, if we have rbut faith to see, that eternal truth which is one aspect of the nature of God, that truth which tests and explains and reconciles our partial and conflicting beliefs. There are times, no doubt, when to some of us the truth may be hidden from our eyes. The mountains may be veiled in clouds which we cannot pierce. But some of us perhaps have had experience of moments and moods when Divine truth seems to burst in upon the eye of the soul, and it is an im- mense help to be able to believe that, whether we see it or not, it is always there in the background of life, the one eternal, unchangeable goal of all the faith and of all the intellectual effort of mankind. IV. One other spiritual background let me men- tion— it is the background of the Christian ideal. Behind the foreground of the actual daily lives lived by Christian men and women comes the distant ideal —and do we not constantly feel that it is unattain- ably distant ?— which the Master has set before His Church. The teaching which presents that ideal is no mere dead record of a life that has passed away: it is a perennial reservoir of suggestiveness. Age after age has witnessed the reincarnation of the Christian ideal. It has been assailed in these days, as it has often been assailed in times past. But the movement of modern thought has not been without its compensating advantages to Christianity, and I think we may claim that in some respects we are in closer touch than men used to be with the mind and the heart of Jesus Christ. — H. G. Woods, Master of the Temple. References.— XXII. 6.-J. Keble, Sermons for the Holv Week, p. 454. XXII. 7.— M. Biggs, Practical Ser- mons on Old Testament Subjects, p. 53. XXII. 7 8.— F. IX Maurice, Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testa- ment, p. 83. R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, 47 p. 19. XXII. 9.— Bishop Armstrong, Parochial Sermons p. 172. XXII. 9, 10.— C. Bradley, The Christian Life, p. 206. E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Conoreaa- tion (2nd Series), p. 1G3. THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING 'And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham : and he said Here ami. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad' neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son thine only son, from Me.'— Genesis xxn. io, ii, 12. This chapter teaches us that Abraham had to dis- cover something about God. God did not tempt Abraham to any deed of violence. Instead of that He raised the faith of Abraham and the service and even the character of Abraham to a higher level than they had ever occupied before. I. Abraham having discovered his God of righteous- ness proceeds to test himself with regard to the validity of all earthly affection, and I can imagine, as he feels his pride in his dear son growing day by day, that the influence of early training would come over him. 'Would it be a sublime thing, in fact does God want it— that I offer my boy, as my father and my father's father have offered their boys to their Gods ? ' Then the moment comes, the resolution is taken, he sets out upon his journey, and the lad who is to be his victim accompanies him, unquestioning, for Isaac had a part in this event. Abraham binds him who is dearer than life itself to the old man, lays him on the altar, and prepares for the last dread blow. But something cries, * Hold, lay not thine hand upon the lad.' It was as though an angel spoke to him, for God did speak in the mind of this heroic single-minded servant, who with a very dim light shining in his soul chose to serve at his best. II. The principle herein declared, the situation herein described, has repeated itself in human history a thousand times since that far-off day — a thousand times ? may be a thousand thousand times. It teaches us this — God requires no meaningless sacrifices from any man. I said no meaningless sacrifices, but there are occasions in life when earthly affection has to be sacrificed to eternal truth, when a lower love has to be offered up in the name of a higher. John Bunyan went to prison for his faith in a day when it meant much to suffer, and lie endured within those prison walls some things which were harder than death. Here was a man to whom the stake would have meant nothing, a man who could have faced torture and shame and death with equanimity. He was putting on the altar what was dearer to him than a thousand lives. His blind child, his wife, his other dear ones, were offered to the service of the Most High and for love of Jesus Christ. III. But there is a love for which men and women will sin. The wife will lie for the husband, mothers will do wrong for their children, fathers will sin for home, friend will sacrifice to the devil for friend. Know then that in every case where such decision is taken you have sacrificed husband, wife, child, self, Ver. 14. GENESIS XXIL, XXIV Ver. 18. to the lower, and not to the higher. The highest love is the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and by that I mean the love of Christ which never spared, never will spare those whom He calls. Conse- crate all earth's affection at the altar, and if from the altar you must go to Calvary, then go ! Love's highest is called for, the worthiest, the only one which you can offer in the presence of the Lamb of God. — R. J. Campbell, Sermons Addressed to In- dividuals, p. 171. References. — XXII. 10. — R. Hiley, A Tear's Ser- mons, vol. iii. p. 83. S. A. Tipple, Echoes of Spoken Words, p. 213. JEHOVAH-JIREH 'And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh ; that is, the Lord will provide.'— Genesis xxii. 14. I. The Intended Sacrifice by Abraham of Isaac. — It may be worth our while to ask for a moment what it was exactly that Abraham expected the Lord to provide. We generally use the expression in re- ference to outward things. But there is a meaning deeper than that in the words. What was it God provided for Abraham? What is it God provides for us? A way to discharge the arduous duties which, when they are commanded seem all but impossible for us. 'The Lord will provide.' Provide what? The lamb for a burnt-offering which He has commanded. We see in the fact that God provided the ram which became the appointed sacrifice, through which Isaac's life was preserved. A dim adumbration of the great truth that the only sacrifice which God accepts for the world's sin is the sacrifice which He Himself has promised. II. Note on what Conditions He Provides — I f we want to get our outward needs supplied, our outward weaknesses strengthened, power and energy sufficient for duty, wisdom for perplexity, a share in the sacri- fice which taketh away the sins of the world, we get them all on the condition that we are found in the place where all the provision is treasured. Note when the provision is realized. Up to the very edge we are driven before the hand is put out to help us. III. Note what we are to do with the Provision when we get it. — Abraham christened the anony- mous mountain-top not by a name which reminded him or others of his trial but by a name that pro- claimed God's deliverance. He did not say anything about his agony or about his obedience. God spoke about that, not Abraham. Many a bare bald mountain-top in your career and mine we have got names for. Are they names that commemorate our sufferings, or God's blessings? — A. Maclaren, The God of the Amen, p. 209. References. — XXII. 14. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 165. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1803. S. Martin, Sermons, p. 159. XXII. 15-18. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2523. XXII. 16-18 — E. H. Gifford, Voices of the Prophets, p. 131. XXII. 18.— Expositor (2nd Series), vol. viii. p. 200. XXII.— F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 53. XXIII. 19. — J. Baines, Sermons, p. 139. XXIII. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 62. REBEKAH THE FARSEEINQ Genesis xxiv. I. In the case of Sarah the real drama opens with married life. In the case of Rebekah it opens with the proposal of marriage. The offer comes from Isaac. When she sees the servant approaching she has no idea of his errand. But Rebekah has a wonderful talisman against such surprise — an astonishing power of putting herself instantaneously in the place of those to whom she is speaking. II. There is a peculiarity about Rebekah's sym- pathetic insight. It is not only manifested to things near, but to things at a distance. I would call her a farseeing woman, by which I mean a woman with an insight into the future. What she sees is a vision of the coming will of God. From a worldly standpoint she could do better than marry Isaac. If Rebekah's insight had been limited to the things around her she would have rejected the suit of Isaac. To unite with a worshipper of another God was the revulsion of her soul, so from Rebekah's gaze all Hittite offers fade, and the figure of the Hebrew Isaac stands triumphant. III. The heart of Isaac had been overshadowed by the death of Sarah. Rebekah crept into the vacant spot, and rekindled the ashes in the scene of the van- ished fire. Then comes the actual motherhood of Rebekah. Two sons are born — Esau and Jacob. Esau was the natural heir to the birthright and the blessing. In the ordinary course of things he would be both monarch and priest of the Clan. But now there comes into play the extraordinary foresight of this woman Rebekah. With the eye of an eagle she watches the youth of her two boys. She finds that the first-born is utterly unfit for the great destiny that is before him. She sees that Jacob and not Esau is the man for his father's priesthood. Might not Isaac be made to ordain God's man instead of his own? Rebekah fell by fanaticism for God. She never dreamed that she was working for any end but the cause of Providence. — G. Matheson, Representa- tive Women of the Bible, p. 79. Refebences. — XXIV. 1. — G. Woolnough, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv. p. 366. XXIV. 5-8. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2047. XXIV. 12.— T. L. Cuyler, Christian World Pulpit, 1890, p. 174. THE CHOKED WELLS 'And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father.' — Genesis xxiv. 18. I. The wells of our father may get choked. There are some wells where men were drinking when the world was young, and spite of all the ages they are still fresh, and the dripping bucket plashed in them this day. Such was the well of Jacob, for example, and Jesus, weary with His journey, drank of that, though Jacob had been sleeping in his grave for centuries ; and the traveller still slakes his thirst there. But the common fate of wells is not like that. Time, changing environment, or even malicious mis- chief, silts them up. Perhaps the most signal instance 48 Ver. 58. GENESIS XXIV Ver. 58. of that choking the world has ever seen was the law of Moses in the time of Christ. Once, in the golden days of Israel, the law of Moses had been a well of water. Then came the Pharisees and Jewish lawyers, and buried God's simple law in such a mass of learned human folly, poured such a cargo of sand upon the spring, that the wells were choked, and the waters that their fathers drank were lost. And have we not found the same thing in the Gospel? Take the great central doctrine of the sacrifice on Calvary. It was the gladdest news that ever cheered the world, that Jesus died on Calvary for men. But by and by that well got silted up. It became filled with intolerable views of God. It was buried under degrading views of man. The well was choked. II. We must each dig for ourselves to reach the water. One great blight upon the Church to-day is just that men and women will not dig. They are either content to accept their father's creed, or they are content, on the strength of arguments a child could answer, to cast it overboard. You can always tell when a man has been digging for himself by the freshness, the individuality of his religion. The humblest souls, if they have dug for themselves, and by their own search have found the water, will have a note in their music that was never heard before, and some discovery of God that is their own. III. Our discovered wells were named long since. When Isaac dug his well at Gerar men had forgotten about the wells of Abraham. But the day came when Isaac named his wells. And when the neighbours gathered and asked him what the names were, they found they were the names that had been given by Abraham. The wells were not new. They were but rediscovered. I never dig but a new well is found. And we think at first these wells are all our own. But the day comes when we find it is not so. They are the very waters our fathers drank; but the toil and effort, the struggle and the prayer that it took us to reach them, made them so fresh to us that we thought they were a new thing in the world. — G. H. Morrison, Flood-Tide, p. 148. References. — XXIV. 23. — A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii. p. 195. XXIV. 27.— A. Maclaren, Ex- positions of Holy Scripture— Genesis, p. 173. XXIV. 40. — H. J. Buxton, Common Life Religion, p. 258. XXIV. 49. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvii. No. 2231. XXIV. 55. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 772. LOVE AND COURTSHIP 'And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man ? And she said, I will go.'— Genesis xxiv. S8. So much of life's weal or woe is determined by a well-advised or ill-advised love and courtship that the question cannot be approached with too serious and sympathetic attention. I. Parental and Friendly Interest in the Love Affairs of Young People — Nothing is more delight- ful, and delightfully instructive, in this idyllic tale, than the loving sympathy Abraham and Eliezer showed in the matrimonial concerns of Isaac. Look how excellently Abraham behaved himself in such a matter! He was deeply and tenderly interested that Isaac should secure a wife who would be a benediction to him. That is the right spirit. Let all parents and older friends note it and emulate it. II. A Wife sought among the People of Ood Beware of alliances with those who are morally Canaanites and Philistines ! Seek a wife, a husband, among the people of God. The perils of a godless home are of all perils the most to be dreaded. Seek God's guidance and sojourn amid what is godly. III. Confidence in Divine Guidance Amid Love and Courtship. — Abraham never wavered in his faith that God would direct Isaac's future. He argued from God's care of his past interest to God's care of his son's future interests. Parents may be sure that, if they be believers, the God who has guided them will guide their children, His ' Angel ' shall be sent to further their love and their courtship. IV. Qualities which Promise Happiness. — When Eliezer met Rebekah in her remote home he dis- covered features of her personality and character which foretold that she would make a suitable wife for his master's son. And amid many qualities these are well worthy to be noted. She was a domesti- cated woman. When she appeared upon the scene she had ' her pitcher upon her shoulder '. And she used it. There is a danger to-day of Rebekah being minus her pitcher and of her not using it though she may be possessed of it. Rebekah was a woman of a kindly disposition. The spirit of genial courtesy possessed her. A sweet, kind, generous spirit is a powerful factor in the happiness of wedded life. Rebekah and Isaac were both graced with filial de- votion. Rebekah was a devoted daughter. And as for Isaac he is, as a son, beyond all praise. It is such daughters who make faithful and loving wives. It is such sons who are afterwards devoted and affectionate husbands. V. True Love Irradiated this Ancient Court- ship. — ' He loved her ' is the finale of the romantic and tender story. No qualities, however good or noble, can supersede the necessity of deep and strong mutual affection. The love of Isaac and Rebekah is an essential guarantee of happy married life. — Dinsoale T. Young, Messages for Home and Life, p. 75. References. — XXIV. 58. — C. D. Bell, The Name Above Every Name, p. 137. W. H. Aitken, Mission Ser- mons, (3rd Series), p. 51. XXIV. 63. — J. Aspinall, Par- ish Sermons (1st Series), p. 216. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 228. XXIV. 67.— Bishop Thorold, The Yoke of Christ, p. 247. XXIV.— F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 68. W. H. Buxton, Penny Pulpit, No. S34. T. Guthrie, Studies of Character from the Old Testament, p. 61. XXV. S. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 180. J. Parker, Adam, Noah, and Abraham, p. 191. A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, p. 117. XXV. 11. — Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 48. F. W. Farrar, The Fall of Man, p. 228. XXV. 27.— L. D. Bevan, Penny Pulpit, No. 574. XXV. 27-34. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, p. 192. XXV. 29-34. — C. Kingsley, The Gospel of the Pentateuch, p. 72. 49 4 Ver. 32. GENESIS XXV., XXVI Vv. 12-25. THE ATTRACTION OF THE PRESENT 'And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me ?' — Genesis xxv. 32. Esau's weakness and fall in the presence of his over- mastering temptation. I. Esau's good qualities are very evident, being of the kind easily recognized and easily popular among men, the typical sportsman who is only a sportsman, bold and frank and free and generous, with no intri- cacies of character, impulsive and capable of magna- nimity. The very opposite of the prudent, dexterous, nimble man of affairs, rather reckless indeed and hot- headed and passionate. His virtues are, we see, dangerously near to being vices. Without self-con- trol, without spiritual insight, without capacity even to know what spiritual issues were, judging things by immediate profit and material advantage, there was not in him depth of nature out of which a really noble character could be cut. This damning lack of self- control comes out in the passage of our text, the transaction of the birthright. Coming from the hunt hungry and faint, he finds Jacob cooking por- ridge of lentils and asks for it. The sting of ungovern- able appetite makes him feel as if he would die if he did not get it. Jacob takes advantage of his brother's appetite and offers to barter his dish of pottage for Esau's birthright. Esau was hungry, and before his fierce desire for food actually before him such a thing as a prospective right of birth seemed an ethereal thing of no real value. He feels he is going to die, as a man of his type is always sure he will die if he does not get what he wants when the passion is on him; and supposing he does die, it will be poor con- solation that he did not barter this intangible and shadowy blessing of his birthright. ' Behold I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birth right do to me ? ' II. This scene where he surrendered his birthright did not settle the destiny of the two brothers — a compact like this could not stand good for ever, and in some magical way substitute Jacob for Esau in the line of God's great religious purpose. But this scene, though it did not settle their destiny in that sense, revealed the character, the one essential thing which was necessary for the spiritual succession to Abraham; and Esau failed here in this test as he would fail any- where. His question to reassure himself, ' What profit shall this birthright do to me ? ' reveals the bent of his life, and explains his failure. True self-control means willingness to resign the small for the sake of the great, the present for the sake of the future, the • material for the sake of the spiritual, and that is what faith makes possible. He had no patience to wait, no faith to believe in the real value of anything that was not material, no self-restraint to keep him from in- stant surrender to the demand for present gratifica- tion. This is the power of all appeal to passion, that it is present with us now, to be had at once. It is clamant, imperious, insistent, demanding to be satiated with what is actually present. It has no use for a far-off good. It wants immediate profit. III. But it is not merely lack of self-control which Esau displays by the question of our text. It is also lack of appreciation of spiritual values. In a vague way he knew that the birthright meant a religious blessing, and in the grip of his temptation that looked to him as purely a sentiment not to be seriously con- sidered as on a par with a material advantage. How easy it is for all of us to drift into the class of the profane, the secular persons as Esau ; to have ou? spiritual sensibility blunted ; to lose our appreciation of things unseen ; to be so taken up with the means of living that we forget life itself and the things that alone give it security and dignity. We have our birthright as sons of God born to an inheritance as joint heirs with Christ. We belong by essential nature not to the animal kingdom, but to the King- dom of Heaven; and when we forget it and live only with reference to the things of sense and time, we are disinheriting ourselves as Esau did. — Hugh Black, University Sermons, p. 121. Refekence. — XXV. 32. — J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 139. ESAU DESPISED HIS BIRTHRIGHT Genesis xxv. 34. Dr. Marcus Dods says: ' It is perhaps worth noticing that the birthright in Ishmael's line, the guardianship of the temple at Mecca, passed from one branch of the family to another in a precisely similar way. We read that when the guardianship of the temple and the governorship of the town fell into the hands of Abu Gabshan a weak and silly man, Cosa, one of Mohammed's ancestors, circumvented him while in a drunken humour, and bought of him the keys of the temple, and with them the presidency of it, for a bottle of wine. But Abu Gabshan being gotten out of his drunken fit, sufficiently repented of his foolish bargain, from whence grew these proverbs among the Arabs: More vexed with late repentance than Abu Gabshan; and more silly than Abu Gabshan — which are usually said of those who part with a thing of great moment for a small matter.' References.— XXV. 34. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 198. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passiontide, p. 104. C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical, p. 183. W. Bull, Christian World Pul- pit, vol. xxii. p. 100. Archbishop Benson, Sundays in Well- ington College, p. 190. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 77. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passiontide, p. 104. XXV. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 71. ISAAC THE PEACEMAKER Genesis xxvi. 12-25. Isaac gave up his wells rather than quarrel over them. A similar historical instance of peace-loving is given by Knox in his History of the Reformation. George Wishart, the martyr, a man, ' lowly, lovely, glad to teach, desirous to learn/ went by request to the church of Mauchline to preach there. But the Sheriff of Ayrshire, fearing the destruction of the ornaments of the church, got a number of the local gentlemen to 50 Ver. 18. GENESIS XXVI Ver. 25. garrison it against the preacher. One friend of Wishart's determined to enter it by force, but Wish- art, drawing him aside, said : ' Brother, Christ Jesus is as potent upon the fields as in the kirk, ... it is the word of peace that God sends by me ; the blood of no man shall be shed this day for the preaching of it.' And so, withdrawing the whole people, he came, says Knox, to a dyke on a moor-edge, upon which he ascended and continued in preaching for more than three hours. Reference. — XXVI. 12-25. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 201. THE BURIED WELLS 'And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father: for the Philis- tines had stopped them up.' — Genesis xxvi. i8. There is a deep sense in which every life might say, ' All my springs are in Thee '. With that vision in our hearts we need not be afraid to speak of springs of good in men's lives. To say that you can hear the ripple of a spring is not to say you never heard the splash of falling rain. You can honour the water in the well without despising the original and continuous bounty of the skies. And so, with the great over- arching heaven in our minds all the time, we can begin our search for the earthly wells. I. And they need looking for. They are often lost beneath the drift of the years, or choked up by the rubbish that a Philistine world has cast into them. And it is easy to forget that they are there. We see the ground trampled and dust-strewn, and there is little or nothing to suggest that down beneath that unpromising surface there is a spring that might be helping to refresh a tired and thirsty world. Beneath the barren and trampled surface of hu- manity we must find the wells of reverence and faith and love that God Himself has sunk in these hearts ■of ours. Man was made to worship and believe and aspire. God made him so. This Philistine world succeeds in burying deep the springs of the heart's true life. The wells are choked. II. That is the sad fact on which we have to con- centrate our toil. But that involves another fact, bright and inspiring and thrilling — the wells are there. Isaac and his servants worked with a will, with a steady enthusiasm, amidst those piles of stones and heaps of earth. A bystander knowing nothing of the history of these desert spots might well have wondered at the sight of such hopeful toil amid such unpromis- ing surroundings. But they who were doing the work were in possession of one fact that afforded them com- plete inspiration. They knew that there were springs of water if only they had the energy and patience to come at them. The essential spirituality of human life is an ulti- mate fact. When we toil for the souls of men, we are not working on the strength of a speculation. We are not prospecting. Like Isaac of old, we work -where our Father Himself has worked before us. III. ' He digged again the wells of . . . Abraham his Father ; . . . and called them after the names by which his father had called them.' Is not that the story of Jesus of Nazareth? Even as Isaac found in the devastated valley of Gerar the wells of his father Abraham, so did Jesus find in the barren hearts of men the wells of His Father God. They were choked with sins and the cares of the years, but He found them and sounded them, and let into them the light and air of the sky of the Father's mercy, and set the water of life, love and faith and hope, flowing into these poor world- choked hearts. — P. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, p. 157. Reference. — XXVI. 18. — C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 135. LIFE ON QOD'S PLAN 'And Isaac builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there ; and there Isaac's servants digged a well.'— Genesis xxvi. 25. Isaac is felt by every Bible reader to be a much less commanding figure than the men who stand on either side of him — his father Abraham and his son Jacob. He had neither the lofty and daring faith of the one, nor the other's passionate instinct of adventure. His qualities were not such as stir the imagination of the world. Passive rather than intense, he spent one of those lives that are largely controlled and arranged by other people. The influence of his friends always tended to be too strong for him ; so it was, for ex- ample, when the wife he was to marry was selected by his father, and brought home to him by deputy. Hence we are apt to call him tame, torpid, and slow; at all events the too easy victim of over modesty and inertia. But of course such a character has another side. Isaac, it is true, is unlike Abraham and Jacob ; but it is they that are uncommon men, not he. Of the three he exhibits far the closest resemblance to aver- age humanity. You will find a score of Isaacs for every Abraham that emerges. And just for that reason the fact that Isaac was given his place in the great patriarchal succession speaks to us of the truth that God is the God of ordinary people, not less than of those in whom there sleeps the Divine spark of genius or greatness. As some one has said, ' God has a place for the quiet man '. We may have neither distinguished talents nor a distinguished history, but one thing we can do, we can form a link in the chain by which the Divine blessing goes down from one generation to another. . . Pick out the three centres here, where the threads cross, and they are these, the altar, the tent, the well. There we see focussed sharply, and gathered up, the main constituents or impulses which are always to be found in the life of a man after God's own heart; and without being un- duly imaginative or fantastic, we may decide that they stand for religion, home, work. . . . The man of the tent is the prey of time, and passes ; the man of the altar endures for ever. Religion has in it that which is superior to time. . . . Considered as one of the threads which God's hand is weaving into the strand 51 Ver. 25. GENESIS XXVI.-XXVIII Ver. 17. of life, is not work a pure blessing? Is it not, like Isaac's will, an ever-flowing source of power and re- freshment? Does not the will feed both tent and altar. — H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, p. 1. COMMON PLACE PEOPLE 'Isaac's servants digged a well.' — Genesis xxvi. 25. Isaac is the representative of the unimportant but overwhelming majority, and his life and history stood to his descendants, and stand to us, for the glorifica- tion of the commonplace. I. The World's Useful Drudges — When shall we begin to see the poetry, the beauty, the eternal blessedness of common work; the loyalty, the patriot- ism, the high Christian service there may be in simply conducting an honest business or filling a commercial situation ! Every man who conducts his business with clean hands is helping to bring in uni- versal clean-handedness : every man who fills a situa- tion as it ought to be filled is raising the ideal of service and enriching and beautifying his race. Isaac was not an Empire-builder like Abraham, not a great pathetic heroic figure like Jacob, he was a plain man of affairs. He stuck to his work as a sinker of wells, and for three thousand years men, to whom Abraham was a legend and Jacob a hazy tradition, have drunk of the sweet waters of Beer-sheba, and blessed the memory of the man who digged that well. II. The Well - digger's Blessing. — And these things, important in themselves, are also parables of higher things. Your business gives you no time for the work you would so dearly like. It is all you can do to keep things straight in your own little world of trade. Never fear; you will supply your neigh- bour with an honest article at a reasonable price, and finding employment for those who otherwise might starve, you are digging one of father Isaac's wells. When with quaking heart you took that class book and tried to start that little class-meeting you digged a well, and thirsty souls have drunk of it and will bless you evermore. Your little Sunday- school class, your mission-room, is a well, and when this life is over for you, men will think and speak in blessing of the man that digged that well. — F. R. Smith, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxx. p. 118. References. — XXVI. 29. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxviii. No. 2238. XXVI. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Gene- sis, p. 77. XXVII. 1-4. — F. W. Robertson, Sermons (4th Series), p. 123. XXVII. 13.— A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons, vol. ii. p. 255. E. Cooper, Fifty-two Family Ser- mons, p. 247. MUSIC TO THE HOUSE OF GOD (At a Musical Festival) ' This is none other than the house of God.' — Genesis xxvn. 17. I. If we ask what is the true place of music in the Church of God, we can but answer that it has a wondrous power of creating and sustaining emotion and enthusiasm. The danger lies in our confusing music designed and executed for devotional purposes with music designed for other purposes. The devo- tion of the performer's heart in spiritual penitence or praise must inspire the music of the Church if it is to be for the worship of God. II. Music like all other gifts has two sides. Use it as God's gift, praise God in it, let it preach to you higher things and it will be one of your best posses- sions. But do nothing with it except enjoy it, let it end in nothing more lasting than a beautiful feeling and it may be a sensual snare. — Bishop Yeatman- Biggs, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxix., 1904, p. 185. References.— XXVII. 33.— C. Parsons Reichel, Sermons, p. 2. XXVII. 34. — J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 3. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, p. 141. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 227. J. S. Bar- rett, Sermons, p. 33. Bishop Armstrong, Parochial Ser- mons, p. 1. XXVII. 37. — R. Winterbotham, Sermons, p. 118. XXVII. 38.— J. S. Barrett, Sermons, p. 33. Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons (2nd Series), p. 1. T. Ar- nold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 133. XXVII. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 85. DREAMS 'Jacob's dream.' — Genesis xxvm. This dream deals with the supernatural, though in one sense all life is supernatural. And what happened to Jacob occurs again and again in your life and mine. I. Jacob has deceived his father and defrauded his brother: he has fled his home. As he journeyed forward he came to the lonely and rugged hill of Bethel. The darkness overtakes him as he ascends, creeps like a shadowy ghost over him, and then covers with its deep shadow the whole of the mountain from base to summit; and so Jacob is alone in the dark night. Seeking suitable shelter, he takes a stone for his pillow, and, lying down, he is soon fast asleep, a tired, worn man. He dreams, and lo ! in his dream the darkness has fled, and the whole air is lit up with supernatural glory, and the mountain-side is busy with supernatural life. The mountain is a great staircase, and ascending and descending upon it appear angel forms ; while high up, as on a throne of golden splend- our, he seems to see God the great Invisible: and wonderful to tell, he seems to hear a voice, the voice of the Eternal, and the actual words come floating down upon him with an infinite calm. ' I am with thee, and I will keep thee in all places where thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land.' II. Dreams sometimes are evidences of the possibil- ities of our character. The dream may show the mental habit of thought, and the subjects which lie, if not nearest, at least somewhere within the heart of man. Dreams may be a warning to us all. A bad dream may be a revelation of our potential badness. It is the liberation of the evil spirit, the demon within a man. Our evil visions may be revelations of what we may be if left entirely to ourselves, and our good visions manifestations of what God means us to be, prophecies of what we might be, if living close to God in prayer. III. Of course, from an humanistic point of view, the dream of Jacob gives us a glimpse into his char- 52 Vv. 10-22. GENESIS XXVIII Ver. 12. acter. He was far from being a perfect man, yet his dreams reveal to us that his failings were not of the essence of his life. His vision, too, was a new revela- tion to Jacob. It had entered the soul of Jacob and touched chords in his life which never more could be silent. This crisis marked a development in Jacob's character. Hitherto Jacob, though naturally spiritual, had been proudly self-reliant: he had complete faith in his own resources, cleverness, and strength ; felt he was quite a match for most men, a match for life. He wanted to make himself, was going to be his own creator, and so in character he was at heart weak. A man who relies entirely upon himself is not at heart a strong man. Man's strength comes in the strength of his weakness. The moment a man submits his will to the Almighty he becomes a strong man, because he becomes part of God's will. The desert experience convinced Jacob of his need. It revealed to him some- thing of his own nothingness and weakness and loneli- ness, and God's Almightiness and Strength and so he rises from his pillow of stone a stronger and wiser because a humbler man, and sets up his pillar of con- secration while he commits the keeping of his ways to God, the great Guide and great Friend. — M. Gard- ner, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxvi. p. 268. References. — XXVIII. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 101. XXVIII. 10-13.— T. Sadler, Sunday Thoughts, p. 14. H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 1870, p. 643. XXVIII. 10- 17. — F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, p. 100. JACOB AT BETHEL Genesis xxviii. 10-22. Dean Stanley tells us a story of a girl whose grand- father, not believing in the existence of God, had written above his bed, ' God is nowhere '. But the child was only learning to read. Words of more than one syllable were yet beyond her, so she spelled out in her own way what her grandfather had written, and it read for her ' God is now here '. It was the great lesson that Jacob learned at Bethel. References. — XXVIII. 10-22. — A. l^aclaren, Exposi- tions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 206. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 257. S. A. Brooke, Sermons (2nd Series), pp. 231, 249. XXVIII. 11-16.— S. A. Tipple, Echoes of Spoken Words, p. 201. JACOB'S DREAM 'And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven : and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.' — Genesis xxviii. 12. The vision of Jacob's ladder is God's response to two universal longings of the human heart — a craving for a Revelation, and a craving for an Incarnation. I. A Craving for a Revelation. — 'Revelation is a necessity of our thinking mind, a need of our moral nature.' As a child is born with faculties of speech, yet speech lies dormant in the breast of the child until called into exercise by the words which he hears around him, so man was created to hold communion with God, but God must speak to man before man can speak to Him. God has spoken ! Jacob's seed was the elected channel of the Divine communication. The ' angels of God ' ascended and descended upon Israel. The vision was a prediction. Hosea says, ' God spake with us at Bethel '. But Divine revela- tion was the possession of one nation in order that from thence it might become the possession of all mankind. In ' thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed '. As the light of heaven is adapted to every eye, and the air we breathe to every lung, so the Word of God is adapted to the mental and moral constitution of every child of the human race. II. A Craving for an Incarnation. — ' Let not God speak with us, lest we die,' is the voice not only of Israel but of humanity. No ancient religion is with- out the presentiment of an incarnation. The popular idea of Jacob's ladder is false. The vision was that of a staircase of rock. The Rock of Israel was to be no inaccessible crag, but a staircase, a means of com- munication between earth and heaven. This vision was the grand prefiguration of the coming Mediator who was to bridge the chasm between a holy God and sinful man. In the 'fullness of time' Christ came. The ultimate end of the Incarnation was atonement. ' Without shedding of blood is no remission.' The angels of God cannot ascend and descend upon the body of which Christ is the Head unless sin be re- moved. ' He put away sin by the sacrifice of Him- self.' Yet something more is needed for communion between God and man. Salvation is not merely pardon of sin- — it is renewal — it is restoration — it is a new birth — a communication of a Divine life — a new nature — a new power. III. The same Lord Who, on the Day of Pente- cost, gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Pastors and Teachers, has still Gifts for Men. (a) Every minister of Christ, every servant of the Cross, must be ' endued with power from on high ' if he is to have any real success. ' Without Me ye can do nothing.' How did the Apostles re- ceive the baptism of the Holy Ghost? It was vouch- safed in answer to prayer. 'Ask and ye shall receive.' Fervent, persevering prayer is the secret of holiness; it is also the secret of power and the prelude of victory. King Alfred has left a memorable passage in which he sets forth the ideas with which he as- sumed the charge of his distracted realm. He says it is above all things necessary for a king that he hath in his kingdom prayer-men, army-men, work- men. The King of kings needs these three classes of men in every age, and never more than now, and it is in proportion as we, the clergy, and you, the laity, are men of prayer we shall be men of war, bold in our assaults on the strongholds of Satan and the fortresses of sin, and also at the same time workmen needing not to be ashamed as we build up the temple of the living God. (o) The vision at Bethel is full of encouragement. — Every vision of God, every opened heaven, first humbles and then strengthens, from the vision of Jacob's ladder, with the accompanying words, ' I will 53 Ver. 12. GENESIS XXVIII Ver. 12, never leave thee/ to that revelation vouchsafed to the aged St. John in the Isle of Patmos, so dear to hearts fearful of falling into heresy and sin, in which the Apostle saw the stars, the angels of the churches, held and kept in the strong right hand of the glorified Lord. The heavens are opened to-day! The gift of Pentecost has never been recalled ! The illuminating light of the Spirit is not dim; His fires of love are not chilled; the Sacraments are as valid to-day as when administered by apostolic hands; the Gospel is still the ' power of God unto salvation '. The final victory lies with the Cross of Christ. THE RETURN OF THE ANGELS ' And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven : and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.' — Genesis xxviii. 12. 'And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.' Genesis xxxii. i. Wellnigh twenty years had passed away since Jacob had had his vision at Bethel. They had been years of hard and constant labour; they had been years of remarkable prosperity. No longer was Jacob an empty-handed fugitive, leaving his home for an un- certain future. God had been with him, and had advanced him wonderfully, and had blessed him in his basket and his store. And now he was a rich and prosperous man, master of herds and flocks innumer- able, and with a host of servants at his call, ready to further him in every venture. There are men who prosper and who pay for prospering by never seeing the angels any more. They win their fortune, but they lose their vision, and so are they poorer than at one-and-twenty. But Jacob, for all his cunning shrewdness, was not the man to lose his hold on God ; he had a heart that thirsted after God even in his most worldly and successful days. Now he was on his way home to Canaan, and as he journeyed the angels of God met him. This was the second time, for — - twenty years before — had they not flashed upon his sight at Bethel? And what I want to do to-night is this, I want to take these two angelic visits, and to show you how they differed from one another, and how these differences have their meanings still. I. First, then, the former angels were seen among the hills; but the latter upon the trodden highway. We can readily picture the scenery at Bethel, where Jacob saw the ladder to the heavens. It was a place of wild and rugged grandeur, touched with the mystery of highland solitudes. At home, in the pasture-land of rich Beer-sheba, his eye had looked out upon the rolling downs. There was nothing sublime or awful at Beer-sheba; it was a sweet and satisfying prospect. But here it was different ; here there were rugged cliffs, and rock up-piled on rock in wild confusion; and it was here among the hills of Bethel that Jacob had his first vision of the angels. It was a resting- place of highland grandeur, and the spirit of Jacob was uplifted by it. He was thrilled with the high sense of the sublime, as he lay down amid the loneli- ness of nature. But it was not amid a grandeur such as that that he had his vision when twenty years were gone — he went on his way and the angels of God met him. He was no longer a romantic youth; he was a conventional and unromantic wayfarer. And the road was familiar, and it was hard and dusty, and there was none of the mystery of Bethel here. And yet the angels who had shone at Bethel, in the de- licious hour of freedom and of youth, came back again on to the common road, where feet were plodding along wearily. Now it seems to me that, if we are living wisely, we ought all to have an experience like Jacob. If we have had our hour at Bethel once, we ought also to have our Mahanaim. The man who climbs may have his glimpse of heaven; but so has the man who simply pushes on. And that is the test and triumph of religion, not that it irradiates golden moments, but that it comes, with music and with ministry, into the dusty highroad of to-day. We all grow weary of the routine sometimes. We are tempted to break away and take our liberty. But it was not when Jacob broke into his liberty that the angels of God met with him again. It was when Jacob went upon his way, and quietly and doggedly pushed on, and took the homeward road and did his duty, although seduc- tive voices might be calling. II. Again, the former vision came in solitude, but the latter vision in society. That is another differ- ence to be noted between Bethel and Mahanaim. At Bethel Jacob was utterly alone. For the first time in his life he was alone. He was an exile now from the old tent where he had passed the happy days of boyhood. And at that very hour (for it was sun- down) his brother Esau would be wending homeward, and his aged father would be waiting him, and his mother would be busy in the tent. It is such memories that make us lonely. It was such memories that made Jacob lonely. He saw his home again, and heard its voices ; and it was night, and round him were the hills. And it was then, in such an hour of solitude, when he might cry and there was none to answer, that Jacob had his vision of the angels. Do you see the difference at Mahanaim? Jacob was not solitary now. His wife was there ; his family was there; his servants and his shepherds were about him. And the road was noisy with the stir of life— shouting of drover and lowing of the herd — and now there was a snatch of song, and now the laughter of his merry children. At Bethel there was utter solitude ; at Mahanaim was society. At Bethel there was none to answer; at Mahanaim there were happy voices. And the point to note is that the angels who flashed upon the solitude at Bethel came back again amid that intercourse. III. There is another difference, perhaps the most significant of all. At Bethel the angels were on a shining staircase; at Mahanaim they were armed for war. And so we learn the old and precious lesson that God reveals Himself just as we need Him. He never gives us what we shall want to-morrow; He gives us 54 Ver. 12. GENESIS XXVIII Ver. 22. richly what we need to-day. Just as water, poured into twenty goblets, will take the different shape of every goblet, so the grace of God poured into twenty days, will fill the different need of every day. — G. H. Morrison, The Return of the Angels, p. 1. NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE 'And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.' — Genesis xxvni. 12. The Bible asks us to believe that God did occasionally reveal Himself through the vehicle of dreams. Of course it does not follow from this that God must continue for an indefinite period of time such a method of communication with the spirit of man. Many of the dreams recorded in the Scriptures were vouchsafed to individuals outside the covenant made with Israel, and with regard to the rest it may be remarked that they belong to a very early age when the knowledge of God was scanty and ill-defined. I. While some of the Bible dreams sound the note of warning, others, including Jacob's at Bethel, are harbingers of blessing. An exile from home, he was not an exile from heaven ; for in his sleep he saw the world that is not seen. II. Hazlitt said : ' In Jacob's day there was a ladder between heaven and earth, but now the heavens have gone further off, and become astronomical '. But that is only true in the minds of those who have misunderstood the nature of God. There is no de- thronement of man by any theory of astronomy, for he is neither less nor more man than he was before; he is still the creature of God's love. — W. Taylor, Twelve Favourite Hymns, p. 46. JACOB'S LADDER Jacob's ladder, set up on earth, and reaching to heav- en ; what does it typify or represent but that new way of approach to God which is opened to us in Jesus Christ? I. The fact that it is Jacob's ladder, that so early as his time God gave notice of a Mediator increases our reverence and admiration for His goodness. It shows how far back in God's counsels the great plan of man's redemption was prepared. II. Like Jacob we sometimes in our judgment may light upon a solitary place. We must draw near to God, trusting to nothing but the merits and inter- cession of His dear son. ' He is the way.' III. The particular promise that God made to Jacob. He renewed the covenant that He had made with Abraham, and promised that from him should spring the Messiah. IV. The effect of this remarkable dream on Jacob. When he awakened his soul was filled with awe. It were well if something of this reverent spirit were to be found among worshippers. — R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, Series iii. p. 53. References.— XXVIII. 12. — J. W. Bardsley, Many Mansions, p. 20. F. Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 1-19. Bishop Woodford, Occasional Sermons, p. 242. J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes (2nd Series), p. CG. XXVIII. 13.— G. Mathe- son, The Scottish Review, vol. iii. p. 49. XXVIII. 15. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1921. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1630. XXVIII. 16.— J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 300. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (1st Series), p. 269. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 401. JACOB AT BETHEL 'This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' — Genesis xxviii. 17. Jacob had his Bethel, and it came to him just at the moment when we should least have expected it, just at the time when he was smarting under the sense of his own sin, and loneliness, and outlawry. The King of Love Himself appears to him, and says : ' I will go with thee wherever thou goest '. Man's ex- tremity is God's opportunity. I. What makes our Bethel? Is it not the sense of God's nearness to us and our need of Him? The churches would all be full if the people felt their need of God, for this is God's house, and we want it to be the gate of heaven. Now, and here in God's house, we may look up into heaven and see there our Saviour, Who loves us with an everlasting love, and round about Him those whom we have ' loved and lost awhile '. II. Before we leave Jacob, let us look at his beauti- ful prayer to God, in which he vows a vow of obedi- ence. This is the use of all Bethels — that as God speaks to us we may make our vows back to Him. Church and churchgoing will do us no good unless we hear God speaking to us in the reading of His Word, and in the preaching, and in the prayers, and in the music, and unless, having heard God's Voice, we do our part and answer back and make our vows that God shall be our God. Will you do this, will you rejoice before God with this blessed vow of Jacob's, ' The Lord shall be my God' ? Oh, it will help you so all through your life. This is the house of God; we desire that it should be the gate of heaven. You see sometimes little children pointing upwards, but the Book says that heaven is where God is, and if God is here then heaven has begun upon earth. If God is here, then His love is with us, and we shall grow more loving here and now. References.— XXVIII. 17.— J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, (9th Series), p. 81. XXVIII. 19.— J. Eames, Sermons to Boys and Girls, p. 155. XXVIII. 20-22.— H. Allon, Chris- tian World Pulpit, vol. xxv. p. 60. 'Of all that Thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.' — Genesis xxviii. 22. Jacob's vow has been the preacher's theme in every age, yet its teaching for the Christian Church has never been more greatly needed than it is to-day. Permit me, therefore, to put before you a few thoughts on giving to God as suggested by our text. I. How we can Give to God — God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, requires us to give to Him in return. (a) We give to Him when we give to those whom He has left, or made, poor in worldly substance. — The widow, fatherless, unfortunate, incapable, even 55 Ver. 22. GENESIS XXVIIL, XXIX., XXXII Ver. 1. those who by sin and prodigality have brought them- selves to want. As the father leaves little patches in his garden, and says to his children, ' I leave you to cultivate these; those are your little gardens/ so does our Heavenly Father leave, in those poor and needy ones, patches in His great garden for us to dress and keep ; and he that ' giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord '. (b) We give to him when we promote the great purposes which He has at heart. — An earnest man is so bound up with his purposes and work that they are, as it were, but a larger self. We speak of men ' embarking ' in enterprises — going into them as the pilot into his ship. The wind that wafts the ship on carries him upon his way. Christ is steering the ship of this world's destinies and those of individual souls to the shore of safety and purity and bliss, and to help to fill its sails is to waft on Christ Himself on His triumphal way. Give to promote Christ's cause on the earth, and you are giving to God. II. The Motive Power. — All motive power which constrains men to give to God is from God Himself. 1. A recognition of dependence upon God. — ' All that Thou shalt give me.' ' What hast thou that thou hast not received ? ' Tenants of God, we owe Him our rent of cheerful giving. 2. Gratitude to God. — ' All that Thou shalt give me.' How generous is that ' all '. " We are always giving, giving,' said one. ' Not quite that,' was the re- ply, ' but we are always getting, getting.' He gives life and friends ; He gave His Son ; He giveth the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. ' What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits ? ' 3. Imitation of God. — As He gives let us give. Be the children of your Father, Who maketh His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the just and un- just. 4. Response to God. — ' Of all that Thou shalt give I shall give.' God's giving to us is the seed which He sows in our hearts and lives, to bring forth from them the fair harvest of kindliness, beneficence, help- fulness. What could He do for His vineyard that He has not done ? Surely a ' tenth ' is but a small return for such bountiful sowing. III. Practical Rules for Giving — 1. Seize special times of blessing for devising liberal things for God. — It was just after Jacob had his wonderful and comforting vision that he made this vow. As the swift current of the stream tells of the height of the mountains in which it took its rise, so if we seize the time of signal blessing from God for opening a fresh spring of devotedness and beneficence, its bountiful and eager flow will be preserved far into the tame plains of our ordinary life. 2. Lay your plans and adapt your expenditure for giving. — ' I shall surely give.' Out of my abundance, if I have it; out of my poverty, if that is my lot. As the ancient Greeks spilt a little wine from the cup before tasting it, as a libation to the gods, so let us provide first for God. The first-fruits. I may want pictures, books, delicacies, fine clothes, travel, sight-seeing, even ordinary comfort, but ' I shall surely give '. If you have no other luxury, make sure of the luxury of doing good. 3. Bring system to your aid in giving. — Not to check your generous impulses; but still, as the groundwork, there should be system. System as the measure, which, after filling, the heart is free to shake and press together, and make to run over. RACHEL THE PLACID Genesis xxix. You will meet her type continually in the modern world. Do you not know women who seem to go through life easily? I. When Rachel is keeping her father's sheep at the Well of Haran she sees advancing a young man. It is her cousin Jacob. He has come as a fugitive, flying from his brother's vengeance. Jacob breaks into the red heat of love. He is dazzled by Rachel's beauty. He makes an offer to Laban for the hand of his younger daughter. He promises to serve him for seven years, and the offer is accepted. The seven years are past, and the happy day is coming. But there are two dissentients to the general joy. The one is Laban, the other is Leah. She has cherished for Jacob a secret and passionate love. The solemn act is completed. What is that face which emerges from the veil. It is not Rachel ; it is Leah. II. We can in a measure explain Jacob's ac- quiescence. But Rachel — it is her placidness that surprises us. Why does she not protest? Her placidness was appropriate, for two reasons. (a) The artist is describing a race and time where- in everything that happens is received as an act of Divine will. (6) There was something about this youngwoman's religion which would make her not wholly averse to polygamy. She was not altogether emancipated from the belief that in addition to the Almighty God of heaven there were certain subordinate deities allowed to carry out His will on earth. Specially in the regions of the home she sought a sphere for these. So Rachel accepted her ill fortune with a good grace — almost with graciousness. — G. Mathe- son, Representative Women of the Bible, p. 105. References. — XXIX. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Gen- esis, p. 110. XXX. 1; 48-50.— F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 113. XXX. 27. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Common Life Religion, p. 223. XXXI. 3-5. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1630. XXXI. 13. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1267. XXX. 48-50.— F. W. Robertson, Notes on Gene- sis, p. 113. JACOB THE ASPIRING ' The angels of God met him.'— Genesis xxxii. i. We are accustomed to think of Jacob as a character of lights and shadows mingling without reason. I. As commonly understood, the portrait of this man does present an inconsistency. This apparently bad man has a beautiful dream, so beautiful that it has become immortal. What the best men of the past had not seen this fraudulent youth beholds. 56 Ver. 1. GENESIS XXXII Ver. 1. II. Why did the artist give such a vision to such a man? The previous life of Jacob had not been that prosaic thing which the popular view would have us believe. This dream of the night was in the first instance a dream of the morning, and the vision which Jacob saw in the desert was the vision which had followed him amid the haunts of men. Jacob, then, appears from the very outset as a mentally aspir- ing man. He wanted to be the cleric of the family, the ecclesiastic of the clan. III. But in Jacob's Bethel dream there is a penal as well as a pleasurable element. He pronounced the spot of the vision to be a 'dreadful place'. The dream had a retributive as well as a rewarding function. To be a Churchman in those days was to be a power; it was to wield an influence far beyond the strength of the secular arm. Jacob felt what many a young man now feels — the social uplifting involved in the clerical office. This was the bane of his dream, and this was the feeling which the vision reproved. IV. The effect of Jacob's dream in one word was ' Peniel '. He never would have wrestled at Peniel if he had dreamed at Bethel ! This dream gave him a conscience. It told him that to be an angel of God was a very serious thing. V. There is a curious suggestion in the picture of this conflicting period of Jacob's life. The angel with whom he is struggling is represented as saying ' Let me go ! for the day breaketh '. Jacob found it easier to be good by night than by day. But his greatest glory is reserved for his hour of greatest solitude — the hour of death. There the angel of the struggle appears once more. He is still the angel of ministra- tion, but he is no longer a mere helper to Jacob — he is inciting Jacob to bless others. The dying man becomes for the first time the universal benefactor. — G. Matheson, Representative Men of the Bible, p. 152. THE SEASON FOR DIVINE HELP 'Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.' — Genesis xxxii. i. I. The important word here is the word ' met '. It is distinctly implied that no supernatural help came to Jacob at the beginning. He went out on his own way and on the strength of his own resources ; it was only in the middle of his journey that he encountered the angels of God. And I believe this is typical of the life of every man. We are most of us under a mistake on this point. We often see young people waiting for a special call to some mission — for a mani- fest intervention of God that says, ' This is the way ; walk ye in it '. The special call does not come at the outset; they must start without it. There is a great difference between not having a special call to go and having a special call not to go. The latter case is a very common one, and it should certainly be taken as a prohibition. Many a man has a family depen- dent on him for bread. Many a woman has an aged mother to nurse. Many a youth has an ancestral taint of delicacy which incapacitates for active service. All these hear a voice which says, ' Do not work to- day in my vineyard '. Sometimes a man has no pro- hibition, but simply an inability to see the full length of the way. In extreme youth I was offered in a crowded town an appointment which involved weekly preaching at two services. I had only twelve sermons, and I did not see where the thirteenth was to come from. I was tempted to decline. But I asked my- self the question, 'Are you adequate to the twelve? ' and I answered ' yes '. Then I said to myself : ' God's presence will not reveal itself till your own power is exhausted. He has given you twelve talents to begin with. Do not bury them, do not lay them up in a napkin; go in your own strength as far as you can; and on the way He will meet you and light your torch anew.' The experience was abundantly realized. If there is a multitude to be fed in the wilderness, it is no proof of your disqualification that you have only five loaves. You have five; and that is your call to a beginning. You have probably material for ten people. Minister to the ten ! Do not let the eleventh frighten you beforehand ! Take each case as it comes ! Break the bread as far as it will go ! Re- fuse to paralyse yourself by looking forward ! Keep the eleventh man in abeyance until you have come up to him; and then the angels will meet you with their twelve baskets, and the crowd will greet you with their blessings, and the limit will expand into an overflow. — G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 27. ST. MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS 'The angels of God.' — Genesis xxxii. i. I. AH the Company of Heaven — It is not the custom in this day to think as much about this un- seen holy existence as men did in days that are gone. It is impossible for us to read the Holy Scrip- tures without constantly observing that those who lived in the days of the writers of these sacred books very fully believed in the existence near about them of endless holy beings belonging to God's unseen kingdom, holy souls serving God either in worship or in ministration to the sons of men. In the book of Genesis we read of Jacob and the angels. Passing on to a later stage we read of the ministration by Angels in the times of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha, and, not to multiply instances, we can readily recall the words of the Hebrew Psalmist when he speaks of the angel of God tarrying round about those of the sons of men who fear God. Passing to the New Testament, we can think of the appearance of angels to minister to One no less great than the Son of Man at the end of His temptation, to minister to Him in the Garden of Gethsemane when His mind was overwrought with the greatness of the thoughts which pressed upon Him then; and we read of angels, too, appearing on the Resurrection day with their message of explana- tion of the things which the faithful Disciples saw. But in our own day we do not perhaps realize quite so fully that there is ever about us, above us, this great realm of unseen beings under the government of God, pure and holy souls, servants of the same God 57 Vv. 1-32. GENESIS XXXII Vv. 24 and 29. Whom we serve, and it may be that perhaps in think- ing too seldom of them we miss an uplifting thought that we might otherwise have to help us in our religious life. May we not endeavour, acting upon the suggestion which comes to us at this time through the occurrence of Michaelmas Day, the feast of St. Michael and all Angels, to see whether we cannot put some more thought about the great realm unseen into our minds ? II. Joy amongst the Angels. — Not only may we in our times of worship have our thoughts uplifted and imaginations warmed, our conception extended, by thinking of all the inhabitants of this great unseen world over which our God rules, but we can go out from our worship into the world of our daily duties in which we meet as men and women. We know well, as Christian men and women held down by their human infirmities, by the sins which they are continu- ally committing, we can go out with the thought that not only may we in church worship be linked with the holy angels of God, but we can go out with the thought that these angels are with us during the life we live day by day, taking cognizance of all the efforts we make to win other souls to God, and we go out with the assurance that there is joy in the presence of these angels of God when through the effort of ourselves or through the effort of any other believer in the Lord one sinner only repenteth. Let us be encouraged at this time by the thought of the great- ness of the realm to which we belong. God, in calling us into His service and making us His sons, has not made us members of a small concern, not united us into a tiny family, but has given us a great birthright, made us members of an immense kingdom. We pro- fess in our creed our belief in Him as ' Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible,' and as members of that great kingdom, as members of that immense family over which God rules and shows His love, let us go forward inspirited and ennobled, determined that, so far as our influence reaches, other souls shall get to know the greatness of this inheritance which has become ours. So may we be strengthened to be more happy and joyful in our own lives, more useful to those who are about us in the world, and thereby bring more honour, praise, and glory to our God. JACOB, A PRINCE WITH GOD Genesis xxxii. 1-32. Jacob's name was changed to Israel. Why are the names of men changed? Sometimes it is just the fashion of the times ; sometimes it is for safety in time of peril, as when John Knox signed himself John Sinclair (his mother's name) ; but in the Bible change of name indicates change of character, or a new and true ap- preciation of what a man really is. Abram becomes Abraham, Simon becomes Peter, Saul becomes Paul. In the clear light of heaven there is to be a new name given to every one that overcometh. References —XXXII. 1. — R. W. Winterbotham, Ser- mons, p. 461. XXXII. 1-2. — A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, p. 195. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi. No. 1544. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 214. XXXII. 7, 11, 24, 28.— J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 39. XXXII. 9, 12. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 222. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. Hi. No. 3010. REMEMBRANCE OF PAST MERCIES ' I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast shewed unto Thy servant.' — Genesis xxxii. 10. Jacob's distinguishing grace . . . was a habit of affec- tionate musing upon God's providences towards him in times past, and of overflowing thankfulness for them. Not that he had not other graces also, but this seems to have been his distinguishing grace. All good men have in their measure all graces ; for He, by whom they have any, does not give one apart from the whole : He gives the root, and the root puts forth branches. But since time, and circumstances, and their own use of the gift, and their own disposition and character, have much influence on the mode of its manifesta- tion, so it happens, that each good man has his own distinguishing grace, apart from the rest, his own particular hue and fragrance and fashion, as a flower may have. As, then, there are numberless flowers on the earth, all of them flowers, ?nd so far like each other; and all springing from the same earth, and nourished by the same air and dew, and none without beauty; and yet some are more beautiful than others; and of those which are beautiful, some excel in colour and others in sweetness, and others in form ; and then, again, those which are sweet have such perfect sweet- ness, yet so distinct, that we do not know how to compare them together, or to say which is the sweeter; so is it with souls filled and nurtured by God's secret grace — J. H. Newman. ' References. — XXXII. 10. — J. Baldwin Brown, Aids to the Development of the Divine Life, No. vii. Spurgeon, Ser- mons, vol. xxx. No. 1787. XXXII. 11, 12.— Ibid. vol. xlix. No. 2817. XXXII. 12.— Ibid. vol. xxxiil. No. 1938; ibid. Evening by Evening, p. 109. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 1874, p. 235. THE NAME OF GOD ' And Jacob was left alone ; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. . . . And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.' — Genesis xxxii. 24 and 29. Among simple and primitive folk people are named after what they are, and therefore to tell their name is to tell their nature. Thomas means a twin, Peter means a rock, and in old days, or among primitive tribes in our own day, a man would not be called Thomas unless he were a twin, nor Peter unless there were something about him, or the circumstances of his birth, reminding of a rock. So are the names of God in the Old Testament. They are the revelations of His nature, or aspects of His character. ' God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by My name Jehovah was I not known unto them.' Thus there comes to Moses a deeper insight into the Divine 58 Vv. 24 and 29. GENESIS XXXII Ver. 26. nature than was attained by his forefathers. To them God was known only as power, God Almighty; to Moses He becomes known as the Eternal Unity, the Supreme One. Once more — and this, surely, is the most beautiful of all the names revealed to those men of olden time — ' And the Lord descended in the cloud ' . . . ' and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long- suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.' I. To us as much as to any Patriarch or Prophet, both to us and to our children as much as to the men who lived three thousand years ago, there is nothing in all the world and in all our life so important as the name of God. In every supreme crisis of our lot, when in the presence of wrong, or of shipwreck, or grief, or misfortune, or death, when we feel our littleness and weakness amid the great forces which move the world, the one thing we need to know is the name or character of God. If His name be Father and His heart eternal kindness, then there is light in the darkness, however dark it be. II. The Story of Jacob's Midnight Wrestling. — Jacob had travelled a long way since that dark day of the cheated birthright and the stolen blessing. He had travelled a long way since the dream of the angels on the ladder and the sound of God's voice above. His heart had been softened and ripened by the experiences of life, by Rachel and by the children; and he had grown rich in something more than in flocks and herds, in camels and in goats, in friendships, in affections, in the cherished treasures of the heart; and the man was changed, deepened in insight and in character; and here, in this matter, sees he is face to face with the consequences of the sin of his youth. To-morrow perhaps the pitiless ven- geance of the desert chieftain may fall not only on him, but on all whom he loves. The sense of security and comfort fell away from Jacob, as once and again it falls from you and from me. His life was stripped bare by his own conscience, and in that hour of suspense and of terror, when the evil of his own deed seemed coming back to judgment, in that hour of midnight silence and solitude, he felt the unseen presence with him which is the only stay of man in his extremity and in his agony. He cried, Tell me, I pray Thee, thy name. Tell me, thou unseen visitor to my soul. Art thou mercy or art thou judgment? Art thou love or fear. Art thou truly my God and my safety, or dost thou disregard my cry and look down unmoved as these stars in the midnight sky while I am delivered to the fate I have deserved. III. There are Secret Wrestlings of the Soul which can only be told in Parable The anguish of them refuses the poor interpretation of our common speech. So the wrestling of Jacob by the ford Jabbok is pictured to us. ' There wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.' It is not possible to come out of such a struggle without some change of character, some mark or scar which shall remain with us all our earthly days, and so we read and interpret the meaning of that touch of the unseen visitor which made Jacob from that day forward halt upon his thigh. IV. It is not to the Wise and Learned only or chiefly, it is not to the reason and intellect that God oftenest tells the secret of His name. It is for those who wrestle and strive with Him, those who struggle and pray, for light and beauty and the presence divine ; to those stricken with their own sins and sorrows, or the sins and sorrow of the world, or they who are bewildered with the evidence of their own ill-doing, or pity for the ill-doing of others, who cry out to Him in their loneliness, ' Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name '. And these it is who all their life after- ward can catch amid the disasters and the distresses of life, amid the ruin of hopes and the separations of love, the music of a finer harmony, the music of the everlasting chime. These it is who can behold, not indeed unmoved, but confident in a righteous purpose and a final recompense, who can behold in faith the catastrophes of the human lot which make up so much of human history. References. — XXXII. 24. — Bishop Boyd Carpenter, Penny Pulpit, No. 608. Archbishop Magee, Penny Putpit, No. 170S. XXXII. 24, 26, 30. — J. T. Bramston, Fratrious, p. 58. XXXII. 32.— D. Wilton Jenkins, Christian World Pulpit, vol. — p. 170. WRESTLING WITH GOD 'I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.' — Genesis xxxii. 26. This passage has been for ages, not only the locus classicus but also the chief resources of inspiration, for persevering and persistent prayer. Many of us can remember to what an extent the old divines loved to linger with extraordinary affection upon the inci- dent of Jacob at Penuel, and how eloquently they expounded the lesson of every detail of the narrative. I. Now there is a certain mastery that every man has to acquire and win if he is to rise to the height of his being and attain his full development. He will have to be master of his circumstances and prove master of his fate, but more especially he will have to master himself, and not only so, but the highest spiritual blessings are reserved only for those who do obtain the victory over self, and who by means of conflict gain supremacy over their lower nature. In the respect in which God envelopes and encircles our lives and is in all our environment and has permitted our limitations and our disabilities, there is no reason why any man who has to fight against great odds should not suppose that he is wrestling with God, and only realize the higher blessings as he wins them and wrests them from his opponent. In this sense a man prevails with God. II. Further, this self-mastery is a condition of our mastery and effective influence over others. Our im- pression is that we have more difficulty with regard to other wills and other men's actions. But, after all, the surest key to the hearts of other men is to know how to find our way to our own darker recesses of being. 59 Ver. 81. GENESIS XXXII Ver. 36. III. This triumph is one of prayer and faith. In Hosea we read that ' he had power over the angel and prevailed, he wept and made supplication to him ' (xn. 4). This wrestling was a distinct triumph of prayer and prayer's supreme effort. The incident is that of the clashing of wills, and it ended, as all true prayer does, in the complete surrender to the Divine and the cheerful acceptance of God's purpose and plan. — J. G. James, Problems of Prayer, p. 103. References. — XXXII. 26. — J. T. Brarcston, Sermons to Boys, p. 66. W. H. Aitken, Mission Sermons (3rd Series), p. 38. F. W. Farrar, The Fall of Man, p. 236. XXXII. 28- 29.— F. W. Robertson, Sermons (1st Series), p. 36. XXXII. 28. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. Hi. No. 2978 ; ibid., vol. xlii. No. 2486. XXXII. 29.— Bishop Thorold, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi. p. 145. THE DEFEAT UNDER SIN ' And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.' — Genesis xxxii. 31. The battle had been severe, mysterious, life-long. From that battle Jacob came out victorioms — de- cidedly and completely victorious. Nevertheless, his own thigh was put out of joint by the power which he was defeating. And long after he was doomed to feel the loss and the damage which he had there sus- tained. ' The sun rose ' upon Jacob ; but still ' he halted upon his thigh ,'. In the great conflict with sin the issue is quite safe at last to all those who engage in it with an honest purpose and a true heart. Still, none come off with- out many a scar. You may ' bruise the head ' of the serpent which is in you; but it will not be till that serpent has ' bruised your heel '. You may wrestle and prevail; but there will be touches of the enemy which will leave their long and bitter memories. Re- verses, disasters, defeats, there will be all along in the spiritual warfare, even to the very gate of heaven. The way to heaven is made up of falling down and rising up again. The battle is no steady, onward fight; but rallies and retreats — retreats and rallies. I. Reasons for Defeat. — Let us endeavor to see the reasons of these defeats under sin, which recur, again and again, in a regenerate man. Perhaps many of us are not sufficiently alive to the truth that the old sin of the character continues, and continues with unabated force, in the heart of a child of God. (a) Ingenuity of the enemy. — Sometimes, by an ingenious stratagem of the enemy, an entirely new temptation, or an old temptation in a perfectly new form, suddenly presents itself. You had been looking for danger on the one side, when at once it rises up before you on the other. Had you only been looking for it in that direction it would have been nothing. It is its unexpectedness which gives it its influence and its success. (6) A reduction of grace. — All sin in a believer must arise from the reduction of grace. And whence that reduction of grace? From grieving the Holy Ghost. And whence the grieving of the Holy Ghost? An omission of something or other; — prayer, the means of grace, some safeguard. And whence that omission? Carelessness. And whence that careless- ness? Pride, always pride; self-confidence, self-exal- tation. (c) Empty places. — Another secret in your failures lies in empty places. You can never simply expel a sin, you must introduce the opposite to the sin, and so occupy the ground. You can do nothing by a vacuum. Therefore it is that you are overcome. You must fill the heart with good; then there will not be room for the sin. II. Defeat as Training.— Yet defeat is part of your training. It may be converted into a positive good to your soul. God can and will overrule guilt to gain. Let me see how. (a) Sorrow for sin. — There is no sorrow for sin compared to the sorrow after a fall. It is not the sins which we did before the grace of God, but the sins after we have tasted peace, which make the bitter- ness of repentance. All the great recorded sorrows for sins are sorrows after falls. Therefore God has allowed this defeat to teach you repentance. (o) Humbling required. — Depend upon it, you wanted humbling. God saw that you would never be what you wished to be, — that you would never be what He wanted you to be, — that you would never do what He wanted you to do for him, — till you were humbled. He saw that nothing would humble you but sin. Other things had been tried and had failed. Therefore, God, as He is wont, took up His severest method, and let you fall, to humble you. (c) And punishment. — Only go lower, consent to humiliation, accept that sin as a punishment. Yield yourself to the penitential feeling which is stealing over you. And thank God that He still loves you well enough to give you that miserable sense of sin, and shame, and nothingness. (d) Restoration. — Fourthly, get up from your fall as quickly as you can; the danger does not lie in the depth of a fall, but in the length of the time that we lie fallen. The deepest water will not drown us if we do not stay in it; and the shallowest water will destroy life if we do. (e) Union with Christ. — Fifthly, look more to your union with the Lord Jesus Christ. You see what you are, and what you are without Christ. You may ' halt ' ; but ' the sun ' will ' rise ' upon your ' halting '. You may cross over the last passage more as a poor, forgiven sinner crosses — but your crossing will be a safe one. Refebence.— XXXII. 31. — J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (6th Series), p. 33. ENDURANCE, THE CHRISTIAN'S PORTION ' All these things are against me.' — Genesis xxxii. 36. From his youth upwards Jacob had been full of sorrows, and he bore them with a troubled mind. His first words are, ' If God will be with me . . . then shall the Lord be my God '. His next, ' Deliver me, I pray thee '. His next, ' Ye have troubled me '. His next, ' I will go down into the grave unto my son 60 Ver. 2. GENESIS XXXIII., XXXV Vv. 18, 19. mourning '. His next, ' All these things are against me'. And his next, 'Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been '. Blow after blow, stroke after stroke, trouble came like hail. That one hailstone falls is a proof, not that no more will come, but that others are coming surely ; when we feel the first we say, ' It begins to hail,' — we do not argue that it is over, but that it is to come. Thus was it with Jacob; the storm muttered around him, and heavy drops fell while he was in his father's house; it drove him abroad. It did not therefore cease because he was out in it: it did not end because it had begun. Rather, it continued, because it had begun; its beginning marked its presence; it began upon a law, which was extended over him in manhood also and old age, as in early youth. It was his calling to be in the storm; it was his very life to be a pilgrimage; it was the very thread of the days of his years to be few and evil. — J. H. Newman. References. — XXXII. — Spurgeon, Sermons, Nos. 2739, 2817, 2979, 3010. F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 116. Genesis xxxiii. ' And he had a fine revenge ; but when Jacob, on his journey, heard that his brother was near with 400 men, and made division of his flocks and herds, his man-servants and maid-servants, impetuous as a swollen hill-torrent, the fierce son of the desert, baked red with Syrian light, leapt down upon him, and fell on his neck, and wept. And Esau said, " What meanest thou by all this drove which I met? " And Jacob said, " These are to find grace in the sight of my Lord " ; then Esau said, " I have enough, my brother ; keep that thou hast unto thyself ". O mighty prince, didst thou remember thy mother's guile, the skins upon thy hands and neck, and the lie put upon the patriarch as, blind with years, he sat up in his bed snuffing the savoury meat? An ugly memory, I should fancy ! ' — Alexander Smith in Dreamthorp. Reeebences. — XXXIII. 9-11. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. 47, No. 2739. XXXIII.— F. W. Robertson, Notes on Gene- sis, p. 116. XXXV. 1.— C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 308. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1395. A. Maclaren, Ex- positions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 233. XXXV. 1-3. — C. Perren, Revival Sermons, p. 180. ' Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean and change your garments.' — Genesis xxxv. 2. St. John of the Cross says: 'When the patriarch Jacob wished to go up to the Mount of Bethel in order to build there an altar to God on which he should offer sacrifice, he first gave three commands to his household.' He applies these three commands to the spiritual life of the Christian. The strange gods are the ' outside affections and attachments '. ' Use clean means to get rid of the worldly appetites still left in the soul.' And the third thing we must have in order to reach the high mountain is a change of garments. Through the means of the former two works God will change our garments from old to new, putting in the soul a new understanding of God in God, the old understanding of man being left behind and a new love for God in God implanted. He will empty the will of all its old human desires and tastes and will put within the soul a new knowledge and an abysmal delight, all other knowledge, all old imagina- tions, having been cast aside. Thus He will cause to cease all that belongs to the old man, which is the clothing of the natural being, and will clothe the soul in new and supernatural garments according to all its powers. — Obras, vol. i. p. 21. Refebence — XXXV. 8. — J. W. Bergen, Servants of Scripture, p. 12. THE BIRTH OF BENJAMIN 'And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing (for she died) that she called his name Ben-oni ; but his father called him Benjamin. And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem.' — Genesis xxxv. 18, 19. I. Op all that we read in the book of Genesis of the faith of the patriarchs, there are few examples that shine forth more strongly than this of Jacob in the name that he gave his son; being able to look beyond the present sorrow to the power of God that was to be revealed. But for that faith, no doubt he might well have been content to have left the mother's name unchanged. But he knew not only from whom the sorrow came, but whereto he had promised that all sorrows should lead; in Jacob's seed all families of the earth were to be blessed; and as each of his sons were born, even to this last, he would rejoice as feeling that the blessing came nearer and was multi- plied. Thus it was that Jacob's faith was rewarded by the power of the right hand of the Most High revealed above all memories of sorrow. II. Yet the sorrow itself is not without a Gospel lesson; indeed the lesson of the sorrow contributes to and bears part in the triumph. Benjamin was born and Rachel died, not at home, but on a journey; not even in such a home as Jacob had, when, stranger and pilgrim though he was, he pitched his tent, and built an altar, and digged a well, and bought a piece of ground with money of the sons of the people of the land. From that home they were driven ; it was this flight most likely that brought on the mother's hard labour; so that we may say the sorrow wherein Ben- jamin was born came from his brethren's sin, from the folly wrought in Israel and the corruption that is in the world through lust. And even so it was when Bethlehem saw the birth of another Son of sorrow and of power, that sorrow was in Him part of this saving work of love. It became Him who was to be known as a Man of Sorrows to come as a Child of Sorrows; but He was not only born in sorrow Him- self, He was a Son of His mother's sorrow too. Her loneliness teaches us scarcely less than this ; for where- as He had a work to do that we cannot share in, her work was altogether the same as ours, so that her example comes the more closely home to us. For her Son to be homeless was a part of the suffering He undertook for our sake, and by its merit avails for our profit; but she was only one of ourselves, a believer as we. are or ought to be; and therefore if she was 61 GENESIS XXXVII Ver. 18. a wanderer with Him and suffered with Him, we are taught that we must suffer with Him before we can reign with Him. III. But not only sorrow generally is a discipline to faith and a means for growth in holiness ; this special trouble of the wanderer and the homeless is one which it specially befits us that we should learn to know and feel. For however perfect happiness God may have given us on earth, this world or any place in it is not our real home after all. One day we must leave it, and we must have learned before- hand to find a home wherever He is who loves us, if our departure is to be with joy, and according to the old bridal blessing, ' From home to home '. — W. H. Simcox, The Cessation of Prophecy, p. 11. References. — XXXV. 29. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 126. XXXV. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Gene- sis, p. 121. XXXVI. 24.— Expositor (2nd Series), vol. i. p. S52. JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN Genesis xxxvh. With the story of Joseph we come to the last division of Genesis. The development and progress of the household of Jacob, until at length it became a nation in Egypt, had Joseph as a pioneer. The fullness of the narrative is worthy of consideration. There is a fourfold value and importance in the record of Joseph's life. (1) It gives the explanation of the development of the Hebrews. (2) It is a remarkable proof of the quiet operation of Divine Providence overruling evil, and leading at length to the complete victory of truth and righteousness. (3) It affords a splendid example of personal character. (4) It provides a striking series of typical illustrations of Christ. Joseph exemplifies the testing and triumph of faith. I. Joseph's Home Life. — Joseph was the child of Jacob's later life, and escaped all the sad experiences associated with the earlier years at Haran. His companions were his half-brothers, the grown-up sons of Bilhab and Zilpah. From all that we have hither- to seen of them they must have been utterly unfit companions for such a youth. The difference between the elder brethren and Joseph was accentuated by the fact that ' Joseph brought unto his father the evil report of his brethren '. It is sometimes thought that Joseph is blameworthy for telling tales, but there does not seem any warrant for regarding him as a mere spy. There was, however, something much more than this to account for the differences between Joseph and his brethren. The gift of a coat of many colours (or pieces), or rather the 'tunic with sleeves,* was about the most significant act that Jacob could have shown to Joseph. It was a mark of distinction that carried its own meaning, for it implied that exemption from labour which was the peculiar privi- lege of the heir or prince of the Eastern clan. And so when his brethren saw these marks of special favour, ' they hated him, and could not speak peace- ably unto him '. II. Joseph's Dreams. — The hatred of the brothers was soon intensified through the dreams that Joseph narrated to them. They were natural in form as distinct from any Divine vision, and yet they were clearly prophetic of Joseph's future glory. III. In the Course of their Work as Shepherds Jacob's Elder Sons went to Shechem.— It is not surprising that Israel wished to know how it fared with his sons and with his flocks. He therefore commands Joseph to take the journey of inquiry. The promptness and thoroughness of obedience on the part of Joseph is very characteristic of him. It has often and truly been pointed out that Joseph seems to have combined all the best qualities of his ancestors — the capacity of Abraham, the quietness of Isaac, the ability of Jacob. IV. Joseph's Brethren. — The conspiracy was all very simply but quite cleverly concocted, every point was met, the wild beast and the ready explanation. They shrank from slaying but not from enslaving their brother. V. The Outcome. — Reuben seems to have been away when the proposal to sell Joseph was made and carried out. People are often away when they are most needed. They carried out their ideas with great thoroughness. Jacob refused to be consoled. We cannot fail to note the unutterable grief of the aged patriarch. There was no expression of submis- sion to the will of God, and no allusion to the new name — Israel — in the narrative. — W. H. Griffith Thomas, A Devotional Commentary, p. 3. References. — XXXVII. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 135. XXXVII. 1-11. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Genesis, p. 234. XXXVII. 3.— J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children (4th Series), p. 317. THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT 'And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.' — Genesis xxxvii. i8. We will divide this subject into two parts. First of all, let us consider it from the point of view of the brethren, and then as it concerns Joseph. I. The Attitude of the Brothers i. A distinc- tion without a difference. — First of all, notice the distinction these men draw between actual murder and casting him into this pit and letting him die there. Do you know, we are sometimes inclined to draw the same distinction in our conduct towards people? Are there not a great many men and women who would rather cut off their right hand than take the life of another, though they will make the life of that other a living death? Put forth their hand to slay a brother? Not so; but by their words day by day, and by their conduct day by day, they will make the life of that friend, that one who perhaps should be very near and dear to them, a misery by unkind words and insinuations and suggestions, by unkind, thoughtless, careless conduct. And what of our relation to our Lord ? There are many people who will not boldly throw Him over by joining the ranks of the atheists, who yet bring grief and sorrow and pain to His loving heart day after day. 62 Ver. 18. GENESIS XXXVI L, XXXIX Ver. 9. 2. Willing to receive gifts. — Notice also that these brethren were quite willing to receive the gifts brought by their brother Joseph, and yet cast him into the pit. Can you find anywhere a scene of greater cal- lousness and cruelty than this scene? Again let us take care lest we do the same. 3. Evil minds find evil everywhere. — And then, while thinking of the brethren, notice how evil minds will always find evil, noisome, pestilent food wherever they come. What possible temptation to any man could be a caravan of merchantmen on their way down to traffic? and yet here are these brethren with minds bent on evil, falling under the temptation to wrong-doing found in such an innocent thing as a caravan of men going down to Egypt. II. Lessons from Joseph. — Now let us turn our thoughts for a few minutes to Joseph; we may learn three very useful lessons from this incident. 1. Life is not easy. — First notice that life is not a very easy thing after all. Here is Joseph, no doubt as bright and beautiful a specimen of a boy as you would wish to see anywhere, full of good resolutions, full of high ideals, realizing God's blessing within him, realizing God's gifts and power working and ex- panding and growing within him. I suppose he thought that he was going to sweep away all diffi- culty, and then suddenly there comes this terrible thing, this awful difficulty. I suppose we all start more or less like Joseph started, thinking that we are going to make something of life, and that we are going, whatever happens to other people, straight ahead. But disillusionment comes before very long. There comes an awakening, and we find that life is a way be- set with briars and thorns, that there are difficulties and dangers. 2. Difficulties meant to strengthen. — Here we learn that all these difficulties and trials of life are not sent to destroy but to strengthen. They are sent in the way of attainment. Joseph had a great life- work before him. He was to become ruler of a mighty nation, to save the life of a nation. He must be prepared for that work by the suffering, the toil, and the trial. Let us lay hold of that thought for our comfort. God wants you to do some great work in the world, not great perhaps as the world counts greatness, but some great and good work for Him. He wants your life to be a useful, noble, and true life, and the way he fits it is by trial, difficulty, danger, that you may be taught where strength is to be found, how truly to make life noble and successful. 8. No true life except by death. — We learn finally that there is no true life except by death. Joseph had to learn many bitter lessons in the dark and slimy pit. He had to learn that good resolutions and high resolves are not sufficient. God requires that you ■and I should die to ourselves and live unto Him. References. — XXXVII. 19. — II. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons, vol. i. p. 249. XXXVII. J3-3G. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesii, p. 240. XXXVII. 20. — A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons, vol. ii. p. 269. XXXVII. 28. — J. Banstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 32. XXXIX. 2. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1610. M. Biggs, Practical Sermons on Old Testament Subjects, p. 74. XXXIX. 8, 9.— J. T. Bramston, Sermons to Boys, p. 109. Genesis xxxix 9. ' How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? ' So said Joseph, alone with Potiphar's wife? The unhappy woman had been enticing Joseph, then about twenty-seven years old, to gross and grievous sin. Sin had mastered her; she was the insane slave of its power. Now, she in turn craved, by a sort of dreadful ' law of sin,' to drag down another soul with her in the pit. Joseph was not a glorified spirit. He was a young mortal man, subject to ' like passions ' with ours. The fiery arrows of the words, acts, looks of the temptress were aimed upon no automaton, or statue, but upon a being full of the perils of our nature in its prime. Not only so; this young man, this young Oriental man, was placed in circumstances ex- quisitely hard for virtue and easy for moral relaxa- tion. Outwardly, there was no call upon him such as the words noblesse oblige imply ; he was but a purchased slave. And he was in a country, Egypt, peculiarly infected by moral pollution; he had breathed for years the air of its opinion and practice around him. His home in Canaan was no perfect home, yet it had the breath of the Lord and the Promise in it. But now he was — a young man — away from home, awfully away, helplessly separated from the helps of home, including the moral in- fluence of a father who had ' seen God face to face,' poor as his use of that blessing had been. He had been carried off from home by an act of atrocious injustice and cruelty, enough to embitter Joseph's spirit for all time. Awful is the tempter's power when he comes with some seduction, and finds the spirit in rebellion under some real wrong, angry with man, and fretting against Him who has permitted the wrong to be done. I can hardly imagine a position more terribly difficult than that of Joseph, as regarded the open avenues for the temptation. And now, in all its force, it came. I. In this case, unlike Abraham's, the temptation is put before us as an enticement from the powers of darkness. But in Abraham's case we saw how the enemy must have used the test as a lure. So here we may be confident that Joseph's eternal Master and Friend used the lure as a test in faithfulness and love. He took the occasion to give Joseph just that victory which is won by tested faith alone. The young man put the sin away at once, in the name and in the power of God. He was instantly con- scious of two things ; that sin was sin, and that God was near. His moral standard was true. Egypt might condone what it pleased; for him, this act was a ' great wickedness '. And the essence of it was that it was ' against God '. He said nothing of Potiphar's wrath. The all-possessing thought was God. Jacob was far away; but God was there. And how could he ' sin against God ' ? 63 Ver. 9. GENESIS XXXIX Ver. 22. II. Joseph's temptation and his victory over it are both richly typical. His temptation was of a kind about which it is best to say and to write very little, unless under the sternest compulsion of manifest duty. But the kind is a kind awfully present to in- numerable lives ; the besetments of impurity in one form or another, where may they not be? ' The corruption that is in the world through lust ' is a deep cancer, and a deadly one. Too many a human life has felt it first in quite young years. And how persistent it can be, long after the prime is over! So Joseph's awful trial stands for trials past all count- ing. And thus there comes through it, at once, at least this message, that the Word of God ' knows all about ' these fierce assaults. And in that one simple reflection lies a help and hope very precious to tempted hearts. III. Joseph's secret of victory we have noticed already. Briefly, and in its essence, it was ' the practice of the presence of God '. We read nothing, all through Joseph's life, of his inner spiritual ex- perience. But this one sentence, spoken in the hour of temptation, is eloquent to tell us what it must have been. He must have ' walked with God ' in close and watchful intercourse. Perhaps that awful hour in the dry pit at Dothan was his great crisis of discovery of the supreme reality of God for his soul. But however, ' God was in all his thoughts ' ; aye, in the Egyptian house, in the daily task, and so in the fierce temptation. The enemy assailed him with desperate force. But it was in vain. The chamber was not ' empty, swept and garnished '. God was at home within. — Bishop H. C. G. Moule. THE VICTORY OF CONSCIENCE AND FAITH OVER IMPULSE AND OPPORTUNITY 'How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God ?' — Genesis xxxix. 9. All of us may be benefited by seeing how other men have acted under given circumstances. Perhaps the most instructive and helpful biography ever penned, next to that of the only perfect one, is the life of the patriarch Jacob's favourite son; a type in many ways of Christ. I. Think of the circumstances which might have made it easy for him to succumb to the temptation so powerfully described in this chapter. (a) He was young. This fact alone in the estimate of worldly minds is often enough to condone the gravest offences. Youth has its disadvantages, want of experience, etc., but it has also an unspeakable advantage over sinful advanced life in that it is free from the domination and tyranny of inveterate evil habit. (6) He was away from home. How often do young men think that absence from home gives them license to do as they think fit. It was not so with Joseph. He forgot not the lessons he had received under his father's tent nor the God before whom his father had taught him to bow. (c) Joseph might have pleaded that the conse- quences of his sin would be favour and advancement, while the consequences of his resistance would be, in all likelihood, irretrievable disgrace. II. Consider the way in which Joseph, instead of yielding to the pressure of these circumstances, met and overcame the temptation which assailed him. How did he fortify himself against the enticement to evil? (a) By calling things by their right names. He had not so lived as to bedim or disturb his spiritual vision; and so he blurted out the truth at once, and called the act to which he was invited " This great wickedness ". (0) By remembering that all wrong-doing is sin against God.. It may be sin against self also but it most assuredly is sin against God. The faith which utters itself in these words was the source at once of the insight which enabled Joseph to perceive the true nature of the temptation, and of the strength in which he was able to overcome it. — J. R. Bailey, The Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v. p. 160. References. — XXXIX. 9. — G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 330. C. Kingsley, Gospel of the Pentateuch, p. 103. J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 57. XXXIX. 12. — Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 207. XXXIX. 20.— G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 3G9. THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE ' The keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners that were in the prison; and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it.' — Genesis xxxix. 22. Joseph, as depicted in the beautiful Biblical narrative, was a born leader. His sweet and gracious nature, with its brightness and alertness, gave him easy access to men's hearts. Then he was of a gentle and affec- tionate disposition, which delighted in giving people pleasure and in serving them. He was a man of prin- ciple, too, conscientious, trustworthy, willing to suffer rather than commit a base or dishonourable act ; and in the long-run character counts for much and makes men instinctively trust the man of tried probity. His supreme qualification was that he had an inner life of simple faith, which kept him from personal anxiety about his own future and left him free to think of others. There was in him in addition the unusual combination of the imaginative and the practical. The born leader of men must have something of both qualities, the power of the dreamer of appealing to sentiment and creating enthusiasm, bringing a glimpse of the ideal to his more prosaic followers ; and at the same time he must prove his capacity and create con- fidence in his practical wisdom. Joseph showed he possessed both sets of qualities in all the varied situa- tions in which he was placed. The young slave, who rose to be overseer in the house of his master, when he sank to be a prisoner impressed all there with his character and his capacity, so that the keeper of the prison trusted him, and all the inmates readily assented to his personal superiority, till he took his natural place as leader so that ' whatsoever the prisoners did there, he was the doer of it '. The prisoner became the real governor. 64 Ver. 83. GENESIS XLI Vv. 38-49. I. This is the way all leadership works. It is the power to do this which constitutes leadership. This peculiar magnetic power of a great leader makes his followers associate themselves utterly with his for- tunes, so that his triumphs become theirs, and his ambitions write themselves on their minds. In truth the world waits for leaders in every branch of thought and activity, waits for men whom it can follow with a whole heart, whether or not we believe with Carlyle that universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here. Even for practical success in every great enterprise there is a clamant need of leadership. The best designs and the best organisations will come to little without some in- spiring head. Every great work needs a controlling brain and heart, a centre for affection and devotion. If this be amissing, even though all else be there, the best results are impossible. The history of the world may not be what it has been called, merely the bio- graphy of great men ; but at any rate the history of the world would be different if the influence of even a few of its great men had been left out. Sometimes a whole epoch has been dominated by one man, who has made history because he was able to move men by the impulse of his mind and soul. It is a foolish way to treat his- tory as if it were in a vacuum, the whirl of impersonal forces without father or mother or any definite human connexion. To treat the world of man without refer- ence to the power of personal influence is to make it inexplicable. Joseph was the key of whatsoever the prisoners did ; for he was the doer of it. The lines the Reformation took cannot be understood unless you understand something of Luther. II. After all the subtle, magnetic force of a great man is only a common fact of life and experience, seen on a larger scale than usual. It is, or may be, the gift of all in some measure ; and is not merely the privilege of the few. There is none who may not share in the burden and the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven. The patience of the sufferer, the faith of the lowly, the prayers of the saints, the love of loving hearts, the ministry of kindly hands, are as incense swung from the censers of the angels. If you consecrate yourself to God you will get your place and wield your influ- ence. What higher work is there than to help another to a clearer vision of truth, or to a nobler sense of duty, to encourage good and inspire to high ends? — Hugh Black, University Sermons, p. 55. References.— XXXIX. XL. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 140. XL. 1-15. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 248. XLI. 4. — Spurgeon, Morn- ing by Morning, p. 185. XLI. 9. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. No. 680. JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 'Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt.'— Genesis xli. 33. Neither the personality nor the public position of Joseph accounts for his effect on posterity. His peculiarity is not that he rises to a pinnacle of earthly splendour. It is that his splendour has come out of his dungeon. I. The portrait of Joseph is a philosophical picture — the earliest attempt to delineate a theory of the uni- verse in the form of the narrative. Joseph is made the spokesman of the new evangel. He comes before us as the advocate for optimism. II. In the life of Joseph there are three periods: — (a) A child of his father's old age, he has two qualities by heredity and one by education. From his grandfather Abraham he has received the spirit of optimism, from his father Jacob the spirit of ambition, but from his mode of education the spirit of selfishness. The infirmity of this boy Joseph is just his want of encumbrances. He has never had to ask for anything twice. (6) The second part is one of enforced service. He is stolen from home, sold as a slave, and transferred by them to an Egyptian soldier. Suspected in- nocently of grave offences, he is immured in a dungeon. He begins to interpret the dreams of his fellow- prisoners and reveals his poetic genius as he never has revealed it before. (c) The boy of the desert, the youth of the dungeon has become the adviser of royalty. The enemies of his boyhood, these brothers whom he had wronged and his aged father are there. The old patriarchal life is there. But they are all changed. The father has given up his unjust partiality, the brothers have given up their jealousy, and Joseph has given up his selfishness, his dreams are now humanitarian. III. There is only one feature of this portrait which has been alleged to be an artistic blemish, a blemish in its picture of optimism. It has been said, Why did Joseph let his father believe him to be dead for so many years? Had not he been unjust, selfish, monopolizing, eager to grasp more than his share. How could he better make reparation than by effac- ing himself, allowing his name to be blotted out from the living members of that circle whose harmony he had done so much to disturb, and whose unity he had helped to destroy. IV. Even the closing scene of all, the hour of his death, is grandly consistent with the ideal of the picture. Why is it that the writer to the Hebrews has fixed upon this final hour of Joseph as the typical hour of his life? It is because, to be optimistic in that valley is optimism indeed, because the man who can there keep the light in his soul has proved that his faith is supreme. — G. Matheson, The Represent- ative Men of the Bible, p. 174- 'Pharaoh put his ring upon Joseph's hand.' — Genesis xli. 30-49. Many specimens of these old Egyptian signet rings have been found. A writer states that one of the largest he ever saw was in the possession of a French gentleman at Cairo. It was a massive ring, containing some ,£20 worth of gold. On one face of the stone was the name of a king, successor to the Pharaoh of our chapter, on the other side was the engraving of a lion with the legend, ' Lord of strength '. 65 Ver. 18. GENESIS XLII Ver 36. Refebences.— XLI. 38-48.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Genesis, p. 253. XLI. 51.— Expositor (3rd Series), vol. iv. p. 401. XLII. 1-2— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 234; ibid. vol. xl. No. 2379. XLII. 6.— R. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. i. p. 152. XLII. 8.— Spurgeon, Even- ing by Evening, p. 4. XLII. 9.— F. D. Maurice, The Patri- archs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, p. 118. THE FEAR OF GOD * I fear God.' — Genesis xlii. i8. No one could say this with more confidence than Joseph, all whose actions were evidently inspired and governed by genuine piety. He seems to have used this language as a pledge of honourable and just dealing with those who were completely within his power. I. What does the Fear of God Involve? (a) A conviction of God's existence. — Without this man is little better than the brutes that perish, to whom an unseen and Superior Being remains un- known, through the limitation of their faculties. It is the prerogative of man to know that God is, and that He is omnipresent and omniscient. (o) A reverential regard for God's law. — The Supreme is not only a Creator; He is also a Ruler, who ordains laws and ordinances for the regulation of the life of His intelligent and voluntary subjects. The mind of man can not only comprehend such laws ; it can appreciate their moral authority, admire their justice and wisdom, and treat them with loyal re- spect. (c) A sense of amenability to God's authority. — This may take various forms, but from true piety it is never absent. The godly man fears to offend a Governor so great, so righteous, and so interested in the obedience of His people. II. Is the Fear of God Compatible with the Re- lation of theChristian to his Saviour? — The ancient Hebrews cherished toward Jehovah a reverence and awe which gave an especial gravity and solemnity to their religion and their worship. The revelation of the law amid the thunders of Sinai was fitted to form in the Jewish mind an association between religion and trembling awe. But 'grace and truth came by Jesus Christ ' ; and we are told that ' perfect love casteth out fear '. The solution of this difficulty is to be found in the progressive nature alike of revelation and of experience. There were reasons why the earlier revelation should be especially of a God of righteousness, why the latter revelation should be of a God of love. And the penitent sinner, whose religious feelings are first aroused by fear of justly deserved punishment, advances through the teaching of the ' spirit of adoption ' to an intimacy of spiritual fellowship with His Father in heaven which softens fear into reverence and awe into a chastened love. Thus the Christian never ceases to say, ' I fear God ' ; though the expression from his lips has a somewhat altered shade of meaning. III. Are Important Social Ends Answered by the Prevalence among Men of the Fear of God ? Yes, for it is — 66 (a) A corrective to the undue fear of man. (6) A preventive from the tendency to follow out every natural impulse. (c) A strengthening of the bonds of mutual con- fidence in society.-— Where the members of a community are understood to be under the influence of this spiritual and religious motive, there will be less of suspicion and distrust, and more of harmony and fellowship and true love. THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE 'And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concern- ing our brother.' — Genesis xlii. 21. The history of Joseph is well known, but let us briefly recount it up to the point when the brethren break out in the words of the text. It is here that the strange part of the story begins. What was it that made these men, just at this moment, when they saw one of their number bound before their eyes to be retained as a hostage, utter these strange words of self-accusation? I. It was the Power of Conscience But observe that conscience was stirred by memory. (a) Was there anything in the tone of Joseph's voice which brought back to their minds the thought of the brother whom they had so many years ago so wrongfully treated? It is a well-known fact that the voice changes less than anything that belongs to us, and when recognition by form and features fails after years of absence, some well-known and well- remembered tones will start again forgotten links of memory. (o) Was it in the action of blindfolding, which reminded them of that scene so many long and forgotten years ago? (c) Or did they think of what would be the grief of the^ old man at home when he found another son lost, and did this call to their minds the outburst of grief when Joseph was thought to be no more? In any case, it illustrates the fact that conscience is stirred by memory. II. The Power of Conscience to Punish How many times had that scene of anguish, when they were about to cast Joseph into the pit, caused them misery, and how they now recall it ! ' We saw the anguish of his soul and would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.' The face of Joseph is before them as perfectly as if the deed had only happened yesterday. See the story of Herod Anti- pas, the murderer of John the Baptist, in the Gospels. (a) Conscience is the witness in our hearts of a moral ruler. (6) Conscience is the witness to us of a day of account. References. — XLII. 21. — Spurgeon, /Sermon*, vol. xlii. No. 2497. XLII. 21-22.— J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 236. XLII. 22. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 840. Genesis xlii. 36. ' A God of infinite perfections has the whole of our life in His hands, sees the end from the begin- Ver. 36. GENESIS XLII., XLIII Ver. 2. ning, knows how to adjust the strain of trouble to our powers of endurance, sends appropriate little miti- gations of one kind or another, like temporary cordials ; and by a long and wonderful series of interventions, succours, and secret workings, Jacob, who at one time said, ' All these things are against me,' finds himself housed in Goshen, in the land of light.' — James Smetham, Letters, p. 174. A SEA OF TROUBLES 'All these things are against me.'— Genesis xlii. 36. I. There are times when everything seems to be against us. It is clear that such a time had come to Jacob. He was old — life's fire was damped — and the land was famine-stricken and his sons were lost. Jacob had reached one of those bitter times when everything seemed to be against him. It is not the way of the messengers of evil to come at respectable and ordered distances. Sometimes the hand of one has barely ceased to knock when the feet of another are hurrying to the threshold. If this view of the coming of troubles be a true one, and not a rare or exceptional experience, there is one proof of it that we shall be sure to find. We shall find it expressed and crystallized in proverbs, for a proverb is an epi- tome of life ; and a proverb will only live in people's tongue if it interpret with some measure of truth a people's heart. Well then, have we not one proverb that says, 'Troubles never come singly' ? Have we not another that says, 'It never rains but it pours'. These proverbs have lived because men feel that they ring true. They might be written across this hour in Jacob's life, and they might form the motto of hours in your life and mine. May I not say that in the life of Jesus, too, we find traces of this unequal pres- sure? There were days for Him when every voice made music ; there were hours when everything seemed to be against Him. Had it been otherwise the Bible dared not have written that He was tempted in all points like as we are. So to our Lord there came the hour of darkness when sorrows were massed and gathered as to a common centre, and pierced not by one shaft but by a score. He died as a sacrifice upon the cross. II. Things that seem against us may not be really so. God wraps His blessings up in strange disguises and we rarely have faith to see into their heart. Many a thing that we should call a curse, in the language of heaven may be called a blessing; and many a thing we welcome as a blessing, in the language of heaven may be called a curse. I would suggest, then, in all life's darker seasons a wise and reverent suspense of judgment. It takes the totality to under- stand the parts, and we shall not see the whole until the morning. III. The things that seem against us, then, may not be really so; then lastly, whether they are or not we may still triumph. If God be for us who can be against us — all things are working for our good. So may a man whose faith is firm and steadfast wrestle on towards heaven 'gainst storm and wind and tide till the light affliction which endureth for a moment, is changed into the glory of the dawn. — G. H. Morrison, The Unlighted Lustre, p. 207. References. — XLII. 36. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 837. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, p. 113. XLII.— F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 152. XLIII. 1. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons, vol. i. p. 262. 'Carry down the man a present.'— Genesis xliii. 2. What a deeply interesting life was that of Jacob the supplanter! It is a life full of incident. And in that life the story of Joseph is perhaps the most illuminative. The dreaming days are over. The house of Potiphar, with its subtle temptation, and the prison with its dark despair are for ever gone, and Joseph sits a ruler, the ruler of Egypt. Famine drives his brothers, at their father's request, to seek his face, known only to them as the great Egyptian governor. They bow themselves before the brother whom they had wronged and he recognizes them. They knew him not, but he knew them, and was moved towards them. He would have them all be- fore him, and in the presence of them all he desired to make himself known to them. But Benjamin, the son of his own mother, was not with them. He must be brought, and so they are sent back for him, with the instruction that they should see his face no more unless he were with them. When the brothers begin preparations for their return to Egypt, having ob- tained a very reluctant permission for Benjamin to accompany them, Jacob suggests that in addition to taking double money they ' should carry down the man a present ' to propitiate him, and thereby gain his favour. That was the old Jacob of a former day who would rely upon his own resources, his own cunning, his own artfulness. I. Notice, then, this characteristic relapse. It is generally the presence of untoward circumstances which causes this relapse. We are thrown back upon our own resources, as it were, and the first question we ask is this, ' What shall we do ' ? And the answer is almost invariably a relapse to a former type, to the embracing of a former stratagem. We have all yet to learn the philosophy of inactivity. ' What shall we do ' seems to be the first question uppermost in all minds when confronted with diffi- culty and danger. When in the straight betwixt two, in the difficult place, contending with circum- stances and events over which we have no control, for the existence of whicli we cannot be responsible, our salvation rests in the Divine revealing, and not in our own plans and schemes. ' Carry down the man a present ' if you like, but remember it will have no effect upon the issue of the day. II. Having regard then to this important truth that God determines the issue and that none of our plans and schemes are at all necessary, that God is first and must always be first, it may become a gracious and courteous act to ' carry down the man a present '. It may be well for us to consider this. A little sympathy, a little attention, a little considera- 67 Vv. 3, 4. GENESIS XLIV., XLV., XLVI1 Vv. 7-9. tion, these are the things which sweeten life for us all. God is so often wounded in the house of His friends by the utter neglect of those little presents, the little courtesies, the little tokens of love. Every man, woman, and child has something they can give. Society is enriched or impoverished by the individual gifts or negligences of its members. The home is made happy, or dull and miserable, upon the same principle. Give ! Don't think so much about what you can get, but more about what you can give. Remember that your salvation is the free gift of God, ' Without money and without price '. — J. Gay, Com- mon Truths from Queer Texts, p. 137- References. — XLIII. 27. — S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 350. XLIII. 30, 31.— C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of Life and Godliness, p. 98. XLIII. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 156. TEMPERAMENT AND GRACE ' Reuben, thou art my first-born . . . unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.'— Genesis xliv. 3, 4. A man's reputation after death is a very haphazard thing. History is full of minor characters of whom after ages have formed a very definite, but possibly wholly wrong idea, based on some single and perhaps insignificant incident in their career, or a chance re- mark upon them. The same thing may even hap- pen in lifetime: sometimes a man or woman carries about through mature years a wholly false character, founded on some irrelevant thing they did or said in childhood, and which is the only thing their circle of friends remember them by. One wonders, is this the case of Reuben, son of Jacob, who has carried down the ages the burden of a name for ' instability '. I. But first, are we sure what his father meant by ' unstable as water ' ? I fancy most of us think he re- ferred to the weak and yielding nature of that ele- ment. We are wrong. He meant ' boiling over like water '. He was thinking of a caldron placed on a fire of desert thorns. The blaze of the quick fuel heats the pot and suddenly the water bubbles up; as suddenly the treacherous fuel gives out, and the boiling water drops again, flat, silent, chill. What Jacob meant to say of Reuben by this gipsy metaphor was that he was a spirit which boiled up readily and as readily grew cold. We may safely take it that in Reuben we have the type of what we call the impul- sive man, with the merits and the defects of that temperament. II. It has struck me that there is a Reuben also in the New Testament. This New Testament Reuben is not a shepherd but a fisherman, but he is generous, warm-hearted, strong in impulse, weak in constancy, he boils up and he falls cold. Peter is Reuben in temperament: yet Reuben was a moral failure, 'he could not excel,' while Peter was a saint and did excel. III. The moral I desire to fix on the Old Testa- ment story is that whatever be our temperament, too fast like Reuben's, or too slow like some others, Christ can so remake us that we shall not be failures in life. I do not mean that Christ alters our tempera- ments. He did not alter Peter's. The dissimilation at Antioch, the tradition of Peter's flight from per- secution at Rome and his return to die, tell us that he was in natural make the same man. But the power of Christ recovered him as surely as he fell. — J. H. Skrine, The Heart's Counsel, p. 85. References. — XLIV. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Gene- sis, p. 161. XLV. 1-5. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2516. XLV. 1-15. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scrip- ture—Genesis, p. 260. XLV. 3.— R. C. Trench, Sermons New and Old, p. 37. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 370. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1488, p. 41. XLV. 3-5.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 449. Genesis xlv. 4. ' The true tears are those which are called forth by the beauty of poetry ; there must be as much ad- miration in them as sorrow. They are the tears which come to our eyes . . . when Joseph cries out, " I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt ". Who does not feel that the man who wrote that was no shallow rhetorician, but a born man of genius, with the true instinct for what is really ad- mirable?'— M. Arnold, in his Essay on Tarbert. References. — XLV. 4. — S. Baring-Gould, Village Preach- ing for a Year, vol. ii. p. 78. Genesis xlv. 5. ' The case of Themistocles was almost like that of Joseph; on being banished into Egypt he also grew in favour with the king, and told his wife " he had been undone, unless he had been undone ". For God esteems it one of His glories that He brings good out of evil; and therefore it were but reason we should trust God to goven His own world as He pleases ; and that we should patiently wait till the change cometh, or the reason be discovered.' — Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living. References. — XLV. 5. — S. Baring-Gould, Village Preach- ing for a year, vol. ii. p. 81. XLV. 8. — R. S. Duff, Christian World Pulpit, 1890, p. 378. E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 179. XLV. 14. — J. Vaughan, Sermons (9th Se- ries), p. 77. XLV. 19, 20.— J. A. Aston, Early Witness to Gospel Truth, pp. 161, 175. XLV. 21.— W. F. Shaw, Ser- mon Sketches, p. 47. XLV. 24. — C. Bosanquet, Tender Grass for the Lambs, p. 33. XLV. 25-28.— J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 61. XLV. 28. — II. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1489, p. 65. XLV. 28. — Spurgeon, Ser- mons, vol. xlii. No. 2470. XLV. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 165. XLVI. 1-4. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2116. XLVI. 2.— A. F. Barfield, Christian World Pul- pit, vol. xxii. p. 12. XLVI. 3, 4. — Spurgeon, Evening oy Evening, p. 133. XLVI. 3,9. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Ser- mons, p. 279. XLVII. 1-12. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 272. JACOB'S RETROSPECT OF LIFE 'And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, «nd set him before Pharaoh : and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou ? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.'— Genesis xlvii. 7-9. I. Jacob had lived a long life as we should count it ; one of half the length is as much as most men are 68 Vv. 7-9. GENESIS XLVII Ver. 9. able to look forward to. And he had lived a holy life ; the one great sin of his youth had been punished by a long and hard discipline that had not been in vain. The father whom he had deceived had blessed him again without deceit; and the God of Bethel had been with him still ever since the hour of his first covenant with him. How could he complain of so long a life, so long a pilgrimage, that is, a journey away from home, as being one of too few days. Can the days of pilgrimage be too few? Is it not the object to reach home as soon as the pilgrim can? Or if few why were they evil? Step after step, year after year had brought him nearer to the City which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. Or if evil he means, not days of sin but days of suffering only — much as he had suffered, was it not more than made up to him by blessings? Surely Jacob, when he had seen all his sons in peace together, had lived long enough and happily enough. Enough by our standard of judging, but not by his. There is no im- patience in his words; but there is a holy discontent a lofty dissatisfaction with self. Not to be satisfied with the happiness or the holiness he had, with the work that he had done for God, so long as there was greater holiness attained, or more work elsewhere; while he was not the best, to count nothing that he had good — such was the temper of Jacob, such of the apostle, and such of every true Israelite. II. Let this be our temper too. We have, I trust, had our measures of God's grace, and done some sort of service to Him in the year that has just gone by. And yet, were not its three hundred and sixty-five days, its fifty-two Sundays, too few for us? With all the grace, all the happiness that God may have given to any of, were not those few days evil? Have our days attained to the days of Him, our Father and Redeemer, in the days of His pilgrimage? If not, let us be no more content than Jacob was with what our life has been. He who, as at this time, was brought under God's old law fulfilled the whole perfectly: if we with all the grace given us in the Gospel have our years stained with sin, what can we say but what Jacob said? Let us not be satisfied with less — with less than the fulfilment of all righteousness, as Jesus fulfilled it. Until we have done this, let us think nothing done; while there is only a single sin on our conscience, however truly repented, however fully pardoned, let us confess the days of our years to be few and evil, and ourselves to be unprofitable servants. III. And yet while we despise ourselves do not lose hope. Looking to Jesus we are humbled; but also looking to Jesus we are saved. Made like Him by the keeping of His commandments, however imper- fectly, made one with Him by His own grace and love, we trust at last to be found in Him, righteous in His righteousness, though our own be nothing, when the few and evil days and years are past, and our pilgrimage finds its end in Mount Zion. — W. H. Simcox, The Cessation of Prophecy, p. 30 • 69 REFEBEiNCES— XLVII. 8.— G. Brooks, Outlines of Ser- mons, p. 280. XLVII. 8, 9.— J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (3rd Series), p. 164. THE GREATNESS AND LITTLENESS OF HUMAN LIFE ' The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years : few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrim- age.'— Genesis xlvii. 9. The sense of the nothingness of life, impressed on us by the very fact that it comes to an end, is much deepened when we contrast it with the capabilities of us who live it. Had Jacob lived Methuselah's age he would have called it short. This is what we all feel, though at first sight it seems a contradiction, that even though the days as they go be slow, and be laden with many events, or with sorrows or dreari- ness, lengthening them out and making them tedious, yet the year passes quick though the hours tarry, and time bygone is as a dream, though we thought it would never go while it was going, and the reason seems to be this; that, when we contemplate human life in itself, in however small a portion of it, we see implied in it the presence of a soul, the energy of a spiritual existence, of an accountable being; con- sciousness tells us this concerning it every moment. But when we look back on it in memory we view it but externally, as a mere lapse of time, as a mere earthly history. And the longest duration of this external world is as dust and weighs nothing against one moment's life of the world within. Thus we are ever expecting great things from life, from our internal consciousness every moment of our having souls ; and we are ever being disappointed on considering what we have gained from time past or can hope from time to come. And life is ever promising and never ful- filling; and hence, however long it be, our days are few and evil. Men there are who, in a single moment of their lives, have shown a superhuman height and majesty of mind which it would take ages for them to employ on its proper objects, and, as it were, to exhaust; and who by such passing flashes, like rays of the sun, and the darting of lightning, give token of their immor- tality; g've token to us that they are but angels in disguise, the elect of God sealed for eternal life, and destined to judge the world and to reign with Christ for ever. Yet they are suddenly taken away, and we have hardly recognized them when we lose them. Can we believe that they are not removed for higher things elsewhere ? Why should we rest in this world when it is the token and promise of another? Why should we be content with its surface instead of appropriating what is stored beneath it? To those who live by faith everything they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sup, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, are as types and figures witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God. All that we see is destined one day to burst Ver. 4. GENESIS XLIX Ver. 14. forth into a heavenly bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory. Heaven at present is out of sight, but in due time, as snow melts and discovers what it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade away before those greater splendours which are behind it, and on which at present it depends. In that day shadows will retire, and the substance show itself. — • J. H. Newman. References. — XLVII. 9. — H. Woodcock, Sermon Out- lines, p. 101. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iv. p. 214. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture —Genesis, p. 279. XLVIII. 1-7.— H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 1870, p. 217. XLVIII. 3.— J. Oates, The Sorrow of Qod, p. 81. XLVIII. 15, 16. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1972. F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 170. H. Mel- vill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2261. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Genesis, p. 279. XLVIII. 19.— B. R. Wil- son, A Lent in London, p. 81. XLVIII. 21. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1630. XLIX. 3, 4.— J. C. M. Bel- lew, Five Occasional Sermons, p. 19. * Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.'— Genesis xlix. 4. The verse which Ruskin once, in a mood of depression, thought was most suitable for his own epitaph. ' The public men of the times which followed the Restoration were by no means deficient in courage or ability; and some kinds of talent appear to have been developed amongst them to a remarkable degree. . . . Their power of reading things of high import, in signs which to others were invisible or unintelligible, resembled magic. But the curse of Reuben was upon them all: " Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel ".' Macaulay's Essay on Sir William Temple. REUBEN ' Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.' — Genesis xlix. 4. St. John of the Cross remarks on this text: ' The Patriarch Jacob compared his son Reuben to unstable water, because in certain sins he had given rein to his appetite, and he said, "Effusus es sicut aqua, non crescas"; unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. It is as if he had said, because in thy appetites thou art unstable as water, thou shalt not excel in virtue. As hot water, when it is not covered, easily loses its heat, and as aromatic spices when they are exposed to the air gradually lose the fragrance and strength of their smell, so the soul which is not concentrated on the love of God alone loses warmth and vigour in virtue.' — Subida del Monte Carmelo, Book I. Chapter X. References. — XLIX. 4. — M. Anderson, Penny Pulpit, No. 1572, p. 209. J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons, 1875, p. 252. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No. 158. SIMEON AND LEVI: BAD BROTHERS ' Simeon and Levi are brethren.'— Genesis xlix. 5. I. Simeon and Levi Constituted an Unholy Brotherhood. — Evidently Jacob does not refer simply to physical brotherhood. A deeper community, a more real brotherhood is here asseverated; when Jacob says ' Simeon and Levi are brethren,' he means that they are brethren in disposition. What was their common disposition? We shall see somewhat of detail presently, meanwhile remember that they were passionate, headstrong, cruel, deceitful, revengeful, un- controlled. II. Simeon and Levi had Unhallowed Be- longings. (a) They had sinful homes. Their habitations would not bear inspection. Many ' instruments ' were necessary in their habitations, but what business had they with ' instruments of cruelty ' there? I am afraid there are very questionable instruments in some habitations. Is there not a book or two which ought no longer to defile your library? Is there no picture which should be banished? There are homes which need a periodical moral cleaning. (6) ' Weapons of violence are their swords ' is the R. V. reading. So Simeon and Levi are charged with having perverted instrumentalities. Their swords were legitimate weapons. The original intention of the sword was defence or at most righteous aggression. Simeon and Levi used their swords to perpetrate a wrong on others, not to save themselves from wrong. They transformed a legitimate weapon into a weapon of violence. III. Simeon and Levi's Evil case drew from their Father a Godly and Reasonable Prayer. — ' O my soul,' cries Jacob, ' come not thou into their secret, unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they digged down a wall.' Reviewing the sinful courses of these two sons the dying father prays. Jacob prays concerning his soul. Jacob gives up a lofty conception of the soul when he terms it ' his honour '. It is a wonderful thing that in these early days of the world a man had such a vision of the worth of the soul. IV. Jacob uttered a Righteous Imprecation upon Simeon and Levi's Sin. — ' Cursed be their anger for it was fierce ; and their wrath for it was cruel.' Their father did not curse them, but their sin. Jacob does not imprecate all anger but such as is ' fierce ' and ' cruel '. Fierceness and cruelty are very remote from Christianity. V. A Just Judgment was Pronounced upon Simeon and Levi ' I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel,' exclaims the departing patri- arch. Simeon and Levi were not to attain to political consequence, nor did their tribes or descendants. Divided and scattered ! That was the righteous judgment of this evil brotherhood. — Dinsdale T. Young, Neglected People of the Bible, p. 41. References. — XLIX. 8-12. — J. Monro-Gibson, The Age Before Moses, p. 219. XLIX. 10. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1157. C. Stanford, The Symbols of Christ, p. 35. 'Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens.' — Genesis xlix. 14. ' When I look at the great middle class of this country, and see all that it has done, and see the political position in which it has been to some extent content to rest, I cannot help saying that it reminds me very much of the language which the ancient Hebrew patriarch addressed to one of his sons. He 70 Ver. 22. GENESIS XLIX., L Ver. 25. said : "Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens".' — John Bright at Manchester, 1866. References. — XLIX. 15. — A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiv. XLIX. IS. — J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 101. M. Rainsford, The Fulness of God, p. 17. CHRISTIAN FRUITFULNESS 'Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by the well; whose branches run over the wall. ' — Genesis xlix. 22. I. The Christian in his union with Christ is as a bough. The words of our Lord Jesus which we read just now are these, 'I am the vine; ye are the branches ' — ye are the boughs, (a) This suggests to us first of all the reality which exists between Christ and His people. You cannot tear the branch from the tree without injuring the tree as much as you injure the branch; they are part and parcel each of the other. So you cannot touch our union with Christ but you hurt both Him and us. (6) But this suggests not only the reality of our union with Christ, but the absoluteness of our dependence upon Christ. What can the branch do without the tree? How can it exist at all but as it is sustained by the tree? Just so is our union with Christ. ' Without Me,' he says, ' ye can do nothing.' Just as the bough cannot live without the tree so we cannot exist without Christ. II. In the outcome of the union with Christ the Christian is as a fruitful bough. If you go into the woods now you will see trees pretty much of a much- ness, and the branches on the trees are very much alike. But wait you a month or two, while the spring buds begin to appear, and you will find that, while all the rest of the tree is covered with beautiful foliage, here and there will be obtruding themselves from among the rest mere black sticks, which have no vital union with the tree, though they keep up their respectable appearance as far they can as branches, and will presently be lopped off by the woodman and taken away to be burned. There are lots of people in our churches just like that. All through the winter time they pass muster very well as members. As long as there is no revival they manage to go in and out among the rest, and look very much like them ; but let the time of the singing birds come, let the time when the noise of the turtle is heard in the land come, when Zion begins to awake from the dust and shake fiercely from the bands of her neck — when the sun be- gins to shine and revigorates the dying Church, and ye will soon find who they are who live and who they are who have died. III. In the secret of his spiritual support the Christian is as a fruitful bough by a well. That figure suggests some very precious truths to us ; I see in the well — what ? That by which the tree lives, certainly, and therefore I see in it all the fullness of the Deity. I see in the tree — what? That through which the branch lives. I see the love of Christ, the one medi- ator between God and man. I see therefore that every branch in the tree, having direct intercourse with the deep well through the tree, must live as long as the tree itself lasts. In the higher attainments of the Christian life the Christian is a fruitful bough by a well, 'whose branches run over the wall'. What wall? There is a wall which divides the Church from the world to-day. Would you be like your Master? He is called the Branch. There was a time when from the highest glory He looked down upon this poor world of ours — looked over the heaven's wall and saw us in our low estate. From yonder heaven he shook the fruits of redemption down, which we have been gathering up, and the Christian has not done his duty until he has let his branches run over the wall of the Church. — W. H. Burton, The Penny Pulpit, No. xiii. References. — XLIX. 22. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2113. XLIX. 23, 24.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 2S6. Bishop Biekersteth, Sermons, p. 202. A. Maclaren, Week-day Evening Addresses, p. 72. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i. No. 17. XLIX. 24. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Genesis, p. 295 ; ibid. Morn- ing by Morning, p. 53. A. Maclaren, Week-day Evening Ad- dresses, p. 81. XLIX. 25. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2531. XLIX. 29.— H. N. Powers, American Pulpit of To- day, vol. iii. p. 104. XLIX. 33. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 783. XLIX. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 175. L. — 12, 13. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 187. L. 14-26.— A Maclaren, Expo»itions of Holy Scripture — Gene- sis, p. 305. L. 15-21. — A. Maclaren, Sermons (4th Series), p. 176. L. 19, 21. — J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 48. L. 24-26. — F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 191. W. Bull, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi. p. 371. JOSEPH'S FAITH 'Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.' — Genesis l. 25. Taking this incident, with the New Testament com- mentary upon it, it leads us to a truth which we often lose sight of, but which is indispensable if we would understand the relations of the earlier and the later days. I. Faith is always the same though knowledge varies. There is a vast difference between a man's creed and a man's faith. The one may vary, does vary within very wide limits ; the other remains the same. It is difficult to decide how much Joseph's gospel contained. Even taking the widest possible view of the patriarchal creed, what a crude outline it looks beside ours ! Can there be anything in common between us? Yes, as I said, faith is one thing, creed is another. Joseph and his ancestors were joined to God by the very same bond that unites us to Him. There has never been but one path of life : ' They trusted God and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed '. In that old covenant the one thing needful was trust in the living Jehovah. In the new the one thing needful is the very same emotion, directed to the very same Lord manifested now and incarnate in the Divine Son, our Saviour. II. Faith has its noblest office in detaching from the present. All his life long from the day of his captivity Joseph was an Egyptian in outward seem- ing. He filled his place at Pharaoh's court, but his dying words open a window in his soul, and betray Ver. 25. GENESIS L Ver. 25. how little he had felt that he belonged to the order of things in the midst of which he had been content to live. Dying, he said, ' Carry my bones up from hence '. Therefore we may be sure that, living, the hope of the inheritance must have been buried in his heart as a hidden light and made him an alien every- where but on its blessed soil. And faith will always produce just such effects. If the unseen is ever to rule in men's lives, it must be- come not only an object for certain knowledge, but also for ardent wishes. It must cease to be doubtful, and must seem infinitely desirable. III. Faith makes men energetic in the duties of the present. Take this story of Joseph as giving us a true view of the effect on present action of faith in, and longing for, God's future. He was, as I said, a true Hebrew all his days. But that did not make him run away from Pharaoh's service. He lived by hope, and that made him the better worker in the passing moment, and kept him tugging away all his life at the oar. IV. The one thing which saves this life from being contemptible is the thought of another. It is the horizon that gives dignity to the foreground. A picture without sky has no glory. This present, un- less we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree-tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on. But when we see that all paths lead to heaven, and that our eternity is affected by our acts in time, then it is blessed to gaze, it is possible to love the earthly shadows of the uncreated beauty, it is worth while to work. — A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, p. 1 30. References. — L. 25. — A. Maclaren, Exposition of Holy Scripture — Oenesis, p. 311. L. 25. — A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, p. 130. L. 26. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 370. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scrip- ture— Oenesis, p. 328. V2 EXODUS EXODUS Consider whether any Rune in the wildest imagina- tion of Mythologist ever did such wonders as,' on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done! What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew Book — the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, in the wilderness of Sinai! It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. — Cabxyle, Heroes, v. References. — I. 1-14. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, the Books of Exodus, etc. p. 1. I. 6-7. — Ibid. p. 5. ' Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.' — Exodus i. 8. It is a rare thing to find posterity heirs of their father's love. How should men's favour be but like themselves, variable and inconstant ! There is no certainty but in the favour of God, in whom can be no change, whose love is entailed upon a thousand generations. — Bishop Hall. 1 Come, let us deal wisely with them.'— Exodus i. io. Crimes and criminals are swept away by time, nature finds an antidote for their poisons, and they and their ill consequences alike are blotted out and perish. If we do not forgive the villain at least we cease to hate him, as it grows more clear to us that he injures none so deeply as himself. But the 0r)pia>Sr]<; KtticCa, the enormous wickedness by which humanity itself has been outraged and disgraced, we cannot forgive ; we cannot cease to hate that ; the years roll away, but the tints of it remain on the page of history, deep and horrible as the day on which they were entered there. — Froude, Short Studies, I. pp. 468- 469. Reference. — I. 10-12. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 997. ' But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.' — Exodus i. 12. I have observed, the more the Lord's people are afflicted, and persecuted, the more they grow ; and the Gospel never thrives better than when it is per- secuted.— Fraser of Brea. ' And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river.' — Exodus i. 22. By the decree of Pharaoh, Moses is dead as soon as he is born ; by the decree of God, Moses is brought up in Pharaoh's house. In spite of his own decree Pharaoh nurses, feeds, educates Moses ; and Moses, on behalf of God, uses against Pharaoh all that he derives from Pharaoh. God is wiser than Pharaoh. The devil is old, but God is older. The devil is God's lowest drudge, and servant of servants, who knows not the wonderful fabric which will result from his cross-working. — Dr. Pulsford, Quiet Hours, p. 13. References. — I. 22. — J. Parker, Wednesday Evenings at Cavendish Chapel, p. 77. II. 1-10. — B. D. Johns, Pulpit Notes, p. 22. J. Parker, Wednesday Evenings at Cavendish Chapel, p. 77. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — The Book of Exodus, etc., p. 12. II. 2.— -H. J. Wilmot- Buxton, Holy-Tide^ Teaching, p. 15. A. Murray, The Children for\ Christ, p. 70. II. 3. — C. Leach, Mothers of the Bible, p. 27. E. Tremayne Dunstan, Christ in the Convmon-place, p. 41. ' And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.'— Exodus ii. 4. Moses never had a stronger prediction about him, no not when all his Israelites were pitched about his tent in the wilderness, than now when he lay sprawl- ing alone upon the waves ; no water, no Egyptian can hurt him. Neither friend nor brother dare own him, and now God challenges his custody. When we seem most neglected and forlorn in ourselves, then is God most present, most vigilant. — Bishop Hall. ' And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children.' — Exodus ii. 6. See here the merciful daughter of a cruel father. It is an uncharitable and injurious ground to judge of the child's disposition by the parents. How well doth pity beseem great personages ! — Bishop Hall. It is true that, amidst the clash of arms, the noblest forms of character may be reared, and the highest acts of duty done ; thatthese great and precious results may be due to war as their cause ; and that one high form of sentiment in particular, the love of country, receives a powerful and general stimulus from the bloody strife. But this is as if the furious cruelty of Pharaoh made place for the benign virtue of his daughter. — Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. in. p. 547. \ ^References. — II. 6. — Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix., p. 1 198. »g II. 9.— C. Bickersteth, The Shunamite, p. 12. J. Darlington,| ,,Pulpit, vol. xliv. 1893, p.gl.-, S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 274. C. Jerdan, Pastures of Tender Grass, p. 1. II. 10. — C. H. Parkhurst, A Little Lower than the Angels, p. 230. ' And he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren, . . . and he slew the Egyptian.'— Exodus ii. ii- 12. We are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honour is precisely in proportion to our passion. — Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies. I don't want to decry a just indignation ; on the contrary, I should like it to be more thorough and 73 Ver. 12. EXODUS II Ver. 14. general. A wise man, more than two thousand years ago, when he was asked what would most tend to lessen injustice in the world, said, 'That every by- stander should feel as indignant at a wrong as if he himself were the sufferer'. Let us cherish such in- dignation. But the long-growing evils of a great nation are a tangled business, asking for a good deal more than indignation in order to be got rid of. Indignation is a fine war-horse, but the war-horse must be ridden by a man ; it must be ridden by rationality, skill, and courage, armed with the right weapon, and taking definite aim. — George Eliot in Felix Holt's Address to Working-Men. When another's face is buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we are to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not con- ceivable and surely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice ; its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge ; and in our own quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in the quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. — R. L. Stevenson in A Christmas Sermon. Reference. — II. 11. — C. Brown, The Birth of a Nation, p. 95. UNOBSERVED SINS ' And he (Moses) looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian.' — Exodus ii. 12. I. To think oneself unobserved often makes way for sin. Moses was unwatched and unobserved ; and it was the thought of being unobserved that tempted Moses to his homicide. There is a somewhat similar scene in the New Testament in the story of the denial of Simon Peter. What made it so easy for Peter to fall that night was the thought that there was nobody to see. There are some natures which are intensely sensitive to the reproaching or upbraiding look of human eyes. There are multitudes to whom the smile of heaven means little, but who would not forfeit for worlds the smile of men. There are many whom the fear of God cannot restrain who are yet restrained by the fear of human censure. And sin, taking occasion by that law, whispers to men that they are unobserved, and so makes it easier to transgress. 1. We see it, for instance, in men who go abroad, whether to travel or to settle down. It is a matter of common notoriety how often men are different when abroad. That is not the highest type of character. In the highest character there is always a fine permanence. The man who is rooted in the life of God will show himself the same in every land. 2. I think we are face to face with this peril in the seclusion and secrecy of home. There are men with whose conduct the world can find no fault, but whose behaviour at home is quite contemptible. The peril of home for a certain type of character is j ust the peril of being unobserved. 3. In our modern civilization this is one of the dangers of our cities. It is because men and women think themselves unseen there that the way of de- gradation is so easy. II. Unobserved sins may have far-reaching con- sequences. Moses saw no man — his sin was unobserved — -yet his sin profoundly modified his future. Our hidden sins tell upon what we are, and what we are is the secret of our influence. It is the life that is lived beyond the gaze of men that determines a man's value at the last. There are eyes that go to and fro throughout the earth. In the loneliness of the crowd is One who sees, and our glad assurance is, He sees to save. — G. H. Morrison, The Wings of the Morning, p. 288. Reference. — II. 12. — C. Jerdan, Pastures of Tender Grass, p. 213. ' Behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together.' — Exodus ii. 13. If there had been but any dram of good nature in these Hebrews, they had relented : now it is strange to see that, being so universally vexed with their common adversary, they should yet vex one another. One would have thought that a common opposition should have united them more ; yet now private grudges do thus dangerously divide them. Blows enow were not dealt by the Egyptians, their own must add to the violence. — Bishop Hall. We see Moses when he saw the Israelite and the Egyptian fight ; he did not say, Why strive ye ? but drew his sword and slew the Egyptian : but when he saw the two Israelites fight, he said, You are brethren, why strive you? If the point of doctrine be an Egyptian one, it must be slain by the sword of the spirit, and not reconciled ; but if it be an Israelite, though in the wrong, then, why strive ye ? We see of the fundamental points, our Saviour formeth the league thus, He that is not with tts is against us ; but of points not fundamental, He that is not against us is for us. . . . So as it is a thing of great use well to define what, and of what latitude, those points are which do make men merely aliens and discorporate from the Church of God. — Bacon, Advancement 0] Learning, pt. 2. xxv. 9. ' And he said, Who made thee a prince and judge over us ? '— Exodus ii. 14. Compare the somewhat bitter application of this incident by Cromwell, during the Little Parliament of 1653 (letter clxxxix. in Carlyle's edition) : ' Truly I never more needed all helps from my Christian Friends than now ! Fain would I have my service accepted of the Saints, if the Lord will ; — but it is not so. Being of different judgments, and those of each sort seeking most to propagate their aim, that spirit of kindness that is [in me] to them all is hardly accepted of any. I hope I can say it. My life has been a willing sacrifice — and I hope — for them all Yet it much falls out as when the two Hebrews were rebuked ; you know upon whom they turned then displeasure ! But the Lord is wise ; and will, I trust make manifest that I am no enemy.' 74 Ver. 17. EXODUS II., Ill Ver. 3. ' Thou killedst the Egyptian. ' What if he did ? What if unjustly ? What was this to the Hebrew ? Another man's sin is no excuse for ours. — Bishop Hall. Reference. — II. 15. — T. G. Selby, The God of the Patriarch*, p. 163. ' And the shepherds drove them away ; but Moses stood up and helped them.' — Exodus ii. 17. In Egypt he delivers the oppressed Israelite ; in Midian the wronged daughter of Jethro. A good man will be doing good, wheresoever he is ; his trade is a compound of charity and justice ... no ad- versity can make a good man neglect good duties. — Bishop Hall. Given a noble man, I think your Lordship may expect by and by a polite man. — Carlyle, Latter- day Pamphlets (v.). In his essay on Mazzini, F. W. H. Myers observes that ' in men who have risen to wide-reaching power we generally observe an early preponderance of one of two instincts — the instinct of rule and order, or the instinct of sympathy '. The latter he illustrates from the great Italian's life, as follows: 'Mazzini as a child was very delicate. When he was about six years old he was taken for his first walk. For the first time he saw a beggar, a venerable old man. He stood transfixed, then broke from his mother, threw his arms round the beggar's neck, and kissed him, crying, " Give him something, mother, give him something ". " Love him well, lady," said the aged man : " he is one who will love the people." ' 'And he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.' — Exodus ii. 21. If his espousals remind us for the moment of the wooing of Isaac and Jacob, what we may call the romantic element disappears like a bubble, and we hurry on to that narrative of the origin and growth of the Law which throws everything personal into the shade. . . . The wife, the children of the hero, fade into the background ; it is ' this people ' which forms the exclusive object of every yearning in his heart. 'And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.' — Exodus ii. 23. 'These poor persecuted Scottish Covenanters,' said I to my inquiring Frenchman, in such stinted French as stood at command, 'Us s'en appelaient d' — 'a la PostiriW, interrupted he, helping me out. — 'Ah, Monsieur, non, mille fois non! They ap- pealed to the Eternal God ; not to posterity at all ! Cttait different' — Carlyle in Past and Present. References.— II. 23-25.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2631. III. 1.— E. E. Cleal, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 44. III. 1-14.— C. Stanford, Symbols of Christ, p. 61. W. A. Gray, The Shadow of the Hand, p. 153. ' And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush : and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.'— Exodus hi. 2. It is the office and function of the imagination to re- new life in lights and sounds and emotions that are outworn and familiar. It calls the soul back once more under the dead ribs of nature, and makes the meanest bush burn again, as it did to Moses, with the visible presence of God. — J. Russell Lowell. References. — III. 2.— A. M. Mackay, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. 1893, p. 20. G. F. Browne, ibid. vol. liv. 1898, p. 76. P. McAdam Muir, ibid. vol. lviii. 1900, p. 246. E. E. Cleal, ibid. vol. lxvi. 1904, p. 267 ; see also ibid. vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 44. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, the Books of Exodus, etc. , p. 19. R. J. Camp- bell, Sermons Addressed to Individuals, p. 207- J. M. Neale, Sermons For Some feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 83 ; see also Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iv. p. 251. III. 2, 3. — J. M. Neale, Sermons For Some Feast Bays in the Christian Year, p. 74. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, Part II. p. 299. ' And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight.' — Exodus III. 3. It is good to come to the place of God's presence, howsoever ; God may perhaps speak to thy heart, though thou come but for novelty. Even those who have come upon curiosity have been oft taken. — Bishop Hall. See also Keble's lines on the Fifth Sunday in Lent. What we mean by wondering is not only that we are startled or stunned — that I should call the merely passive element of wonder. . . . We wonder at the riddles of nature, whether animate or inanimate, with a firm conviction that there is a solution to them all, even though we ourselves may not be able to find it. Wonder, no doubt, arises from ignorance, but from a peculiar kind of ignorance, from what might be called a fertile ignorance. — Max Mdller. What must sound reason pronounce of a mind which, in the train of a million thoughts, has wandered to all things under the sun, to all the permanent ob- jects or vanishing appearances in the creation, but never fixed its thought on the supreme reality ; never approached like Moses ' to see this great sight ' ? — John Foster. BURNING BUT NOT BURNT ' And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.' — Exodus hi. 3. The story of Moses is the story, at first, of failure. Two great streams of influences moulded his life : one drawn from the Egyptian surroundings of his early days, the other from his mother's teaching. On the one side he had the speechless-eyed deities of Egypt looking for ever into his face ; on the other he had his belief in the governing providence of God. He looked to find amongst his own people aspirations after better things, and responsiveness to his own spirit ; he met only with coldness, and refusal to follow. Then came his exile in Midian — an exile from all his early dreams and hopes, from the position he had in Egypt, from the future which flowed before him. I. The Vision and its Results. — The vision was the revelation that restored him to faith and energy. The revelation was threefold. It was a revelation (a) of permanence, (b) of purity, (c) of personal power. 75 Ver. 3. EXODUS III Ver. 5. (a) A revelation of permanence, for the bush was not consumed ; it held its own life amidst the devour- ing flame. (b) A revelation of purity, for before he could enter into the deep meaning of that vision, a Voice had bidden him ' put his shoes from off his feet, for the place on which he stood was holy '. (c) A revelation of personal power and love, for out of the distance, out of the background of the vision, giving it its heart and life, came the voice of Him who proclaimed Himself through all the changes and vicissitudes of the life of Israel as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. II. A Vision for all Time. — The revelation was not for Moses alone. Note : — (a) There is in every common bush the light of God, and only those see it who draw off their shoes. (6) We forget to turn aside to see the great sights about us. (c) If we give our hearts leisure and earnestly seek to meet with God, God will meet with us. THE NEGATIVE SIDE ' I will turn aside, and see . . . why not.' — Exodus hi. 3. I have broken up the text in this way that we may see more vividly the special point and largest meaning. Many men turn aside to see why things are ; here is a man who turns aside to see why things are not. God disturbs our little law of continuity — as if we knew anything about continuity ! We were born yesterday, and are struggling to-day, and to-morrow will be for- gotten, and we shape our mouths to the utterance of this great word continuity ! We spoil ourselves by using long words instead of short ones. ' I will turn aside, and see why not.' If you saw a river flowing up a hill, perhaps you would turn aside and see why it does not, like all other rivers, flow downhill. If you saw an eagle building its nest in the middle of the Atlantic, perhaps even you and I might be wakened out of our vulgar narrowness and startled by the ministry of surprise. God has a great surprise ministry. I. I will turn aside, and see why the wicked are not consumed, and I find an answer in the fact that God's mercy endureth for ever, of His love there is no end, and that men may be in reality better than they themselves suppose. Not what we see in our- selves, but what God sees in us is the real standard of judgment. We are never so near the realization of the great blessing as when we see nothing in ourselves to deserve it. II. I will turn aside, and see and inquire why the departed ones do not speak to us and tell us about the other and upper side of things. Who shall say that the departed never speak to us ? What is speak- ing ? Which is the true ear, the ear of the body or the ear of the soul? What are these unexplained noises? What are these sudden utterances of the summer wind ? Who can interpret this gospel of fragrance, this apocalypse of blossom, this mystery of resurrection ? Who knows what voices sweep through the soul, and what tender fingers touch the heart-strings of the life ? Who is it that whispers things to the heart ? Who is it that said, Be brave, take up your work, never stand still till the Master appear ? Who is it, was it, how could it be ? I will turn aside, and see this great sight, and I will believe that more is spoken to us than the ear of the body can hear. III. What a rebuke this is as a text to all our little notions about cause and effect ! The Lord is always surprising people by unexpected revelations ; the Lord is always perplexing the mind by tearing human cal- culations to rags ; again and again through Pente- costal winds there roars this glorious gospel, The Lord reigneth. Personality is greater than law ; conscious- ness is the true continuity ; God is the Master, and if He pleases to turn the sun into darkness He will do it, aye, and the moon into blood, and she shall be melted as into a crimson flame. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 239. References. — III. 3. — W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches, p. 94. W. Boyd Carpenter, The Burning Bush, p. 1. ' God called unto him out of the midst of the bush.' — Exodus hi. 4. ' I think, sir,' says Dinah Morris in Adam Bede (ch. vni.), ' when God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush : Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was — he only saw the brightness of the Lord.' The more the microscope searches out the mole- cular structure of matter, the thinner does its object become, till we feel as if the veil were not being so much withdrawn as being worn away by the keen scrutiny, or rent in twain, until at last we come to the true Shekinah, and may discern through it, if our shoes are off", the words 1 am, burning, but not consumed. — Dr. John Brown on Art and Science. References. — III. 4. — S. Wilberforce, Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, p. 37. HOLY GROUND 'The place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' — Exodus hi. 5. The biography of great men is not confined to public events. It relates the incidents which are private, and describes the experiences which are spiritual and account for visible results. Thus it was with Moses ; we must be with him in the wilderness in order that we may understand his conduct at the court of Pharaoh and at the head of the host of Israel. I. True Sanctity Confined to No Place. — To Moses the desert was a temple, and the acacia thorn a shrine. A spot before indistinguishable from any other in that waste, where the flocks found their pasture or the wild beast his lair, became henceforth holy in the memory of this servant of the Lord. II. The Presence of the Lord Imparts True Holi- ness.— It needs not that princes should lavish their wealth, that architects should embody the concep- tions of their genius, that priests should celebrate 76 Ver. 5. EXODUS III Ver. 5. magnificent rites, that psalms should echo and in- cense float through aisle and dome, in order that a place should become consecrated and sacred to the service of the Eternal. Where God meets with any soul of man, reveals the majesty of His attributes, the righteousness of His law, the tenderness of His love, there is a holy place. III. A Divinely Consecrated Service. — True holi- ness is not so much in the place as in the heart. A man's mission in the world is determined by the counsels and commands received by him in solitude and silence. The holy ground of communion from which God's servants start imparts its holiness to the long path of their pilgrimage, to the varied scenes of i their ministry. Moses could never forget the day of Divine fellowship and revelation from which dated his conscious devotion, his holy service to Israel and to God. In how many great men's lives do we trace this same connexion between holy communion and holy ministry ! Work acceptable to God and bene- ficial to men would not have been achieved had not the power to perform it sprung from the holy point of contact where the Creator and the created meet. IV. We may Make a Holy Place. — There is no spot which may not become the point of contact between the human spirit and the Divine. In the lonely desert or the crowded city, in the peaceful home or the consecrated church, the Divine presence may be realized and the Divine blessing may be ob- tained. Earth may be filled with holy places and life with holy service. ' Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' — Exodus hi. 5. We must not onlv have our hearts bubbling over with thanksgiving and joy in our Father's presence ; we must also take off our shoes from our feet, because we are on holy ground. There is a danger in the emotions being too much aroused unless the prayer be trulv one of real adoration. — Father Dolling in The Pilot (4 May, 1901). All concentrates ; let us not rave ; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us strive and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the Divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches. — Emerson on Self -Reliance. THE CALL TO REVERENCE ' Draw not nigh hither : put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' — Exodus hi. 5- God demanded all the outward forms of a rigid reverence as the first step in that fellowship with Himself to which He was about to summon Moses and the nation Moses was destined to lead and to mould. I. The fact that the name Jehovah is revealed in immediate connexion with this incident seems to warrant us in reading some reference in this symbol to God's essential and unsustained existence. Self- origination, unwasting spontaneity, self-sufficing, ab- solute, and eternal life, that can only be known by contrast to the finite life of the creature — these are the meanings of the striking object-lesson. And the vision perhaps indirectly intimates that God's mysterious love, like His life, was self- derived, inexhaustible, above all outward con- ditions. The flame of its unearthly beauty was maintained by an infinite spontaneity of its own. It did not depend for its strength or fervour upon the things it clasped in the embrace of its fidelity and tenderness. The vision, with its solemn lessons, had probably a most vital bearing upon the future character and history of Moses. It was no unimportant step in training him to that spiritual aptitude for seeing the things of God which made him the foremost of the prophets. Do not think of reverence as one of the second-rate sentiments of the soul, to which no great promises are made. This sense of awe was the threshold to those apocalyptic experiences which brought such privilege and enrichment to his after life. II. When the New Testament is compared with the Old, it may seem to some minds that the grace of reverence has passed more or less into the back- ground. But if we look beneath the surface a little we shall find that the New Testament is just as emphatic in its presentation of this obligation as the Old. Reverence is the comely sheltering sheath within which all the vital New Testament virtues are nur- tured. Only the lower orders of plants produce their seeds upon the surface of the leaf without the protection of floral envelopes and seed vessels. The religious faith is of the rudest and most elementarv type, and will bear only ignoble fruit, where faith is without this protecting sheath of reverence for its delicate growths. Faith without reverence is a pyramid resting upon its apex. There can be no Obedience that is entirely sincere in its qualities without reverence. There can be no Resignation to the Divine will apart from habitual tempers of reverence and godly fear. Irreverence implies partial ignorance of God, and where there is partial ignorance of God the possession of eternal life cannot be rich, free, firmly assured. — T. G. Selby, The Lesson of a Dilemma, p. 123. References. — III. 5. — W. J. Butler, Sermons for Working Men, the Oxford Sermon Library, vol. ii. p. 190. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Plain Preaching to Poor People, 3rd edition, p. 1. J. Fraser, Parochial and other Sermons, p. 248. C. J. Vaug- han, Lessons of Life and Godliness, Sermon viii. III. 5, 6. — W. R. Shepherd, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiii. 1908, p. 267. III. 6. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2633. G. S. Barrett, Outlines of Sermons on the Old Testament, p. 25. 77 Ver. 8. EXODUS III Ver. 14. G. B. Pusey, Selections, p. 207. HI. 6, 7, 9-14.— J. Clifford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. 1901, p. 352. III. 7, 8.— R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. i. p. 165. III. 7, 8, 10, 12.— C. Brown, The Birth of a Nation, p. 107. ' And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large.' — Exodus hi. 8. If it please heaven, we shall all yet make our Exodus from Houndsditch, and bid the sordid con- tinents, of once rich apparel now grown poisonous Ole'-Clo', a mild farewell ! Exodus into wider horizons, into God's daylight once more ; where eternal skies, measuring more than three ells, shall again overarch us ; and men, immeasurably richer for having dwelt among the Hebrews, shall pursue their human pil- grimage, St. Ignatius and much other saintship, and superstitious terror and lumber, lying safe behind us, like the nightmares of a sleep that is past. — Carlyle, Latter-day Pamphlets, No. viii. References. — III. 9, 10. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2631. ' Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My people the children of Israel out of Egypt.'— Exodus hi. io. ' Among our aristocracy,' writes Carlyle in his essay on ' Corn-law Rhymes,' ' there are men, we trust there are many men, who feel that they also are workmen, born to toil, ever in their great Taskmaster's eye, faithfully with heart and head, for those who with heart and hand do, under the same great Task- master, toil for them ; — who have even this noblest and hardest work set before them ; to deliver out of that Egyptian bondage to Wretchedness and Ignor- ance and Sin, the hardhanded millions.' There are many persons, doubtless, who feel the wants and miseries of their fellow-men tenderly if not deeply ; but this feeling is not of the kind to induce them to exert themselves out of their own small circle. They have little faith in their individual exertions doing aught towards a remedy for any of the great disorders of the world. — Sir Arthur Helps. In strictness, the vital refinements are the moral and intellectual steps. The appearance of the Heb- rew Moses, of the Indian Buddh — in Greece, of the Seven Wise Masters, of the acute and upright Socrates, and of the Stoic Zeno, — in Judea, the advent of Jesus, — and in modern Christendom, of the realists Huss, Savonarola, and Luther, are causal facts which carry forward races to new convictions and elevate the rule of life. — Emerson on Civilization. 'Come now therefore.' Great men, like great periods, are explosive materials in which an immense force is accumulated ; it is always pre-requisite for such men, historically and physiologically, that for a long period there has been a collecting, a heaping up, an economizing, and a hoarding with respect to them, — that for a long time no explosion has taken place. — Nietzsche in The Twilight of the Idols. References. — III. 10. — E. L. Hull, Sermons Preached at King's Lynn (3rd Series), p. 81. III. 10, 11.— C. M. Short, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 21. III. 10, 20.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture- — Exodus, etc., p. 26. ' And Moses said, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh.' — Exodus hi. ii. 'For one thing,' says Carlyle in his fourth lecture on Heroes, ' I will remark that this part of Prophet to his Nation was not of his seeking ; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he became conspic- uous. . . . He was with the small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St. Andrews Castle — when one day in this chapel, the preacher, after finishing his exhortation to those fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly, that there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to speak ; — which gifts and heart one of their own number, John Knox the name of him, had. . . . Poor Knox could say no word ; — burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth remembering, that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a baptism he was called to be baptized withal.' At the opening of his Ministry at Collace, Dr. A. A. Bonar notes in his diary : ' I have been thinking of the case of Moses. He trembled and resisted before being sent, but from the moment that he was chosen we never hear of alarm or fear arising.' Reference. — III. 11-13. — G. Hanson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. 1898, p. 101. ' Certainly I will be with thee.' — Exodus hi. 12. He was not a name, then ; not a tradition, not a dream of the past. He lived now as He lived then ; He who had been with men in past ages, was actually with him at that hour. — F. D. Maurice. Compare Knox's urgent letter from Dieppe to his irresolute Scotch friends, in 1557 : ' The invisible and invincible power of God sustaineth and preserveth ac- cording to His promise, all such as with simplicity do obey Him. No less cause have ye to enter in your former enterprise than Moses had to go to the pres- ence of Pharaoh ; for your subjects, yea, your brethren are oppressed ; their bodies and souls holden in bond- age ; and God speaketh to your conscience that ye ought to hazard your own lives, be it against kings or emperors, for their deliverance.' References. — III. 12. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 276. III. 13. — R. J. Campbell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiv. 1903, p. 177. J. Parker, Wednesday Evenings at Cavendish Chapel, p. 105. III. 13-14. — J. Wordsworth, The One Religion, Bampton Lectures, 1881, p. 33. 'And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.'— Exodus hi. 14. ' Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things,' says Emerson in his essay on Spiritual Laws, ' and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It con- sists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, 78 Ver. 15. EXODUS III., IV Ver. 9. and with sublime propriety God is described as saying I AM.' 'I have been struck lately,' wrote Erskine of Lin- lathen to Maurice, 'by the communication which God made to Moses at the Burning Bush. " I AM "—the personal presence and address of God. No new truth concerning the character of God is given ; but Moses had met God Himself, and was then strengthened to meet Pharaoh. There is one immense interval between " He " and " I " — between hearing about God and hearing: God. What an interval ! ' God hath not made a creature that can compre- hend Him ; it is a privilege of His own nature : ' I am that I am ' was His own definition to Moses ; and it was a short one to confound mortality, that durst question God, or ask Him what He was. Indeed, He only is ; all others have and shall be. — Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, pt. i. sec. 2. References. — III. 14, 15. — J. Leckie, Sermons Preached at Ibrox, p. 35. Cox, " The Tetragrammaton," Expositor (2nd Series), i. p. 12. Sherlock, Christian World Pulpit, xx. p. 44. Harris, Christian World Pulpit, xvi. p. 272. Kiugsley, Gospel of the Pentateuch, Sermon ix. Parker, People's Bible, ii. p. 32. Roberts, Homiletic Magazine, viii. p. 211. Stanley, Jewish Church, i. p. 94. T. Arnold, Sermons on Interpretation, p. 209. ' The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham . . . hath sent Me unto You.' — Exodus hi. 15. ' Neither Moses, nor the Prophets, nor Christ Himself, nor even Mohammed,' says Max Miiller in the second volume of his Giffbrd Lectures, 'had to introduce a new God. Their God was always called the God of Abraham, even when freed from all that was local and narrow in the faith of that patriarch.' References. — III. 15. — C. A. Berry, Vision and Duty, p. 1. ' The king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand. And I will stretch out My hand and smite Egypt. ' — Exodus hi. ig-20. What appears to one side a singular proof of the special interposition of Providence, is used on the other side, and necessarily with equal force, to show that Christianity itself is no special interposition of Providence at all, but the natural result of the historical events by which it was ushered into the world. The Duke of Weimar spoke more safely when he said of the tyranny of the first Napoleon in Germany, ' It is unjust, and therefore it cannot last '. He would have spoken more safely still if he had said, 'Last or not last, it is unjust, and being unjust, it cames its own sentence in its heart, and will prove the weakest in the sum of things'. — ■ Goldwin Smith, Lectures on the Study of History, pp. 68-69. When I first heard that Buonaparte had declared that the interests of small states must always succumb to great ones, I said, 'Thank God! he has sealed his fate : from this moment his fall is certain '. — Coleridge. References. — IV. 1. — T. G. Selby, The God of the Patriarchs, p. 163. IV. 1-10.— G. Hanson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. 1897, p. 101. THE ROD THAT IS IN THINE HAND ' What is that in thine hand ? And he said, A rod. . . . Thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs.' — Exodus iv. 2, 17. I. God often does His greatest works by the humblest means. The great forces of nature are not in the earthquake which tumbles cities into ruins. This power passes in a moment ; the soft silent light, the warm summer rain, the stare whose voice is not heard — these are the majestic mighty forces which fill the earth with riches, and control the worlds which con- stitute the wide universe of God. II. So in Providence. The founders of Christianity were fishermen. Christ Himself the Carpenter, the Nazarene, despised and crucified, was the wisdom and the power of God. For did He not say — ' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me'? So in the text, ' What is that in thine hand ? A rod ' — the emblem, the tool of his daily work. With this Moses was to do mighty deeds. Rabbinical tradition has it that Moses was an excellent shepherd. He followed a lamb across the wilderness, plucked it with his rod from a precipice amid the rocks, carried it in his bosom, whereupon God said — ' Let us make this Moses the shepherd of Israel '. He a stranger, a fugitive, a humble shepherd, becomes the lawgiver, the leader, the deliverer of his people. III. The lesson of the text is plain. God still meets every man and asks the old question — ' What is that in thine hand ? ' Is it the tool of an ordinary trade ? With that God will be served. The artisan where he is, in his humble workshop, by using the ' rod which is in his hand,' the merchant in his busi- ness, are in the place where they are now ; all are called upon to do service. Few have rank, or wealth, or power, or eloquence. Let those illustrious few use their ten talents, but let us, the obscure millions, use the simple duties of life — 'the rod that is in our hand '. Not extraordinary works, but ordinary works well done, were demanded by the Master. — J. Cameron Lees, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. 11. p. 509. Reference. — IV. 5. — Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxvi. 1904, p. 171. 'These two signs.'— Exodus iv. g. ' Look into the fourth chapter of Exodus,' Erskine of Linlathen wrote to Lady Elgin, 'and read there the account of the two first signs of which there is any record : Moses' hand becoming leprous and then being cleansed, and his rod becoming a serpent and then returning into the form of a rod. In these two signs we have the history and the prophecy of the world: 1st, human flesh to be sown in corruption, and to be raised in incorruption — that is, the fall and the glorious restoration of man's nature ; 2nd, the serpent gaining a terrible dominion over man, and then being overcome by man's hand. The prophetic part of these facts is that which I believe constitutes 79 Ver. 10. EXODUS IV., V Ver. 1. the true character of a sign, and that part is the cleans- ing of the flesh and the paralysing of the serpent. . . . The fulfilment in reality of these two signs will be the realizing of the twenty-fourth and eighth psalms.' ' And Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent.' — Exodus iv. io. I blush to-day, and greatly fear to expose my unskil- fulness, because, not being eloquent, I cannot express myself with clearness and brevity, nor even as the spirit moves, and the mind and endowed understand- ing point out.- — St. Patrick. ' Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother ? I know that he can speak well.'— Exodus iv. 14. When a great sentiment, as religion or liberty, makes itself deeply felt in any age or country, then great orators appear. As the Andes and Alleghanies indi- cate the line of the fissure in the crust of the earth along which they were lifted, so the great ideas that suddenly expand at some moment the mind of man- kind indicate themselves by orators. — Emerson on Eloquence. ' And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee. ' — Exodus iv. 14. There is something in life which is not love, but which plays as great a part almost — sympathy, quick response — I scarcely know what name to give it ; at any moment, in the hour of need perhaps, a door opens, and some one comes into the room. It may be a commonplace man in a shabby coat, a placid lady in a smart bonnet ; does nothing tell us that this is one of the friends to be, whose hands are to help us over the stony places, whose kindly voices will sound to us hereafter voices out of the infinite ? — Miss Thackeray in Old Kensington. References. — IV. 15. — R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. ii. p. 497. IV. 22, 23. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1440. IV. 23.— J. Parker, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 642. ' Then Zipporah . . . said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.' — Exodus iv. 25. The silken texture of the marriage tie bears a daily strain of wrong and insult to which no other human relation can be subjected without lesion. Two people, by no means reckless of each other's rights and feel- ings but even tender of them for the most part, may tear at one another's heart-strings in this sacred bond with perfect impunity ; though, if they were any other two, they would not speak or look at each other after the outrages they exchange. — W. D. Howells. He had need to be more than a man, that hath a Zipporah in his bosom, and would have true zeal in his heart. — Bishop Hall. You would think, when the child was born, there would be an end to trouble ; and yet it is only the beginning of fresh anxieties. . . . Falling in love and winning love are often difficult tasks to overbearing and rebellious spirits ; but to keep in love is also a business of some importance, to which both man and wife must bring kindness and goodwill. — R. L. Stev- enson, El Dorado. References. — IV. 26. — J. M. Neale, Sermons for some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 18. ' And the people believed.'— Exodus iv. 31. Logic makes but a sorry rhetoric with the multi- tude ; first shoot round comers, and you may not despair of converting by a syllogism. ... So well has this been understood practically in all ages of the world, that no religion yet has been a religion of physics or of philosophy. It has ever been synony- mous with revelation. It never has been a deduction from what we know ; it has ever been an assertion of what we are to believe. It has never lived in a con- clusion ; it has ever been a message, a history, or a vision. No legislator or priest ever dreamed of edu- cating our moral nature by science or by argument. Moses was instructed not to reason from the creation but to work miracles.— Newman, Grammar of As- sent, pp. 94-96. 'Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let My people go.' — Exodus v. 1. Compare these sentences from Mrs. H. B. Stowe's ap- peal to the women of England in 1862 : 'The writer of this has been present at a solemn religious festival in the national capital, given at the home of a portion of those fugitive slaves who have fled to our lines for protection — who, under the shadow of our flag, find sympathy and succour. The national day of thanks- giving was there kept by over a thousand redeemed slaves, and for whom Christian charity had spread an ample repast. Our sisters, we wish you could have witnessed the scene. We wish you could have heard the prayer of the blind old negro, called among his fellows John the Baptist, when in touching broken English he poured forth his thanksgiving. We wish you could have heard the sound of that strange rhythmical chant which is now forbidden to be sung on Southern plantations — the psalm of this modern Exodus — which combines the barbaric fire of the Marseillaise with the religious fervour of the old Hebrew prophet : — Oh, go down, Moses, Way down into Egypt's land ! Tell King Pharaoh To let my people go ! Stand away dere, Stand away dere, And let my people go ! In his Letters (pp. 42-43) Dr. John Ker observes that ' the whole history of this time seems to me one of the most remarkable since the Exodus — the free- ing of as many captives, and the leading a larger nation, white and black, and a whole continent that is to be, out into a higher life — for think what would have become of America had this plague-spot spread ! It is the more remarkable that, though there was an Egypt, and slaves and a Red Sea, there was no Moses nor Aaron, for honest Abraham Lincoln will stand neither for prophet nor for priest. There was only God, and the rod in His own hand — the Northern people, sometimes a serpent, sometimes a piece of 80 Ver. 2. EXODUS V Ver. 18. wood, used for the most part unconsciously, as one can see. But God is very manifest, and it gives one great comfort to see moral order still working, and a governor among the nations.' ' And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?' — Exodus v. 2. ' He had come,' says Maurice, ' to regard himself as the Lord, his will as the will which all things were to obey. . . . He had lost the sense of a righteous government and order in the world ; he had come to believe in tricks and lies ; he had come to think men were the mere creatures of natural agencies.' Note (as Wilkie tells us always to do) the hands in Charles I.'s portrait — -a complete revelation of the man : the one clutching almost convulsively his baton in affectation of power ; the other poor hand hanging weak and helpless. — Westcott. References. — V. 14-19. — L. M. Watt, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 349. ' Ye are idle, ye are idle : therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord.' — Exodus v. 17. Moses talks of sacrifice, Pharaoh talks of work. Anything seems due work to a carnal mind, saving God's service ; nothing superfluous but religious duties. — Bishop Hall. MISTAKEN VIEWS OF RELIGION ' But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle : therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord.' — Exodus v. 17. That was Pharaoh's rough-and-ready and foolish esti- mate of religious aspiration and service. In this matter Pharaoh lives to-day. There are many people who cannot understand the utility of religion , they think religious people are always going to church, and no good comes of it. We must put up with these things ; we have to bear many reproaches, and this we may well add to the number without really in- creasing the weight or the keenness of the injustice. Sometimes great men are mistaken, and sometimes they are unwise, and at no time do they really com- prehend, if they be outside of it themselves, the true religious instinct and the true meaning of deep religi- ous worship, ceremony, and service. The spiritual has always had to contend with the material ; the praying man has always been an obnoxious problem to the man who never prays. I. This opens up the whole subject of work and its meaning, spiritual worship and its signification, heart- sacrifice and its story in red reeking blood. Who is the worker — the architect or the bricklayer ? I never hear of the architects meeting in council for the pur- pose of limiting their hours or increasing their bank holidays. The bricklayer is the worker ; so it seems ; in a certain aspect he is the worker ; but how could he move without the architect? The architect cannot do without the builder any more than the builder can do without the architect ; they are workers to- gether; and this is the true idea of society, each man having his own talent, making his own contri- bution, working under his own individual sense of responsibility, and all men catching the spirit of com- radeship and of union and co-operation, united in the uprearing of a great cathedral, a poem in wood and stone, a house of the living God. II. Insincere religion is idle. People who go to church when they do not want to go — that is idle- ness, and that idleness will soon sour and deepen into blasphemy. Going because I suppose we shall be ex- pected to go — that is idleness and weariness. III. Let us not care what Pharaoh says, but ex- amine our own hearts. The name typified by Pharaoh has given me an opportunity of cross-examining my- self, and I will say, Pharaoh, thou thinkest I am idle, and therefore I want to be religious ; I wonder if Pharaoh is right ; he is a very astute man, he has great councillors about him, he has a great country to administer, and there is a light in those eyes some- times that suggests that he can see a long way into a motive. I never thought this would come to pass, that Pharaoh would say to me that I am an idle hound, because I want to go and serve the Lord. Is Pharaoh right ? It is lawful to learn from the enemy, and if Pharaoh has fixed his eye upon the blemish in my life, if he does see the hollowness of my heart, well, I will think over what the king says. We may learn some things from heathenism. But if I can, by the grace of God, assure myself that by the Holy Spirit I am really sincere in wanting to go to this sermon, this sacrament, this prayer ; if I know through and through, really, that I do want to go and serve God, the gates of hell shall not prevail against me. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. in. p. 142. ' There shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.' — Exodus v. 18. Is it not the height of vanity, the height of selfish- ness to demand affection ? How can any one say, ' I am a great and noble creature : come and worship me, pour yourself out before me : I deserve it all '. Surely, looked at in that way, it seems the height of blasphemy to demand it. And is it not the highest pitch of selfishness to require that a perpetual stream of the same intensity should be continued whatever occupations may distract you, whatever new interests may fill your mind — still the most subtle, the most evanescent, the most inscrutable outcome of the human soul is to be exacted from you as by a rigorous taskmaster : you must make your tale of bricks with or without straw, it matters little. — Dr. Mandell Creighton, Life and Letters, vol. 1. p. 117. Describing in The Soul (part 2) the vain effort after self-amendment made by sensitive hearts, F. W. Newman observes : ' The conscience taxes them with a thousand sins before unsuspected. The evil thus gets worse ; the worshipper is less and less able to look boldly up into the Pure, All-seeing Eye : and he perhaps keeps working at his heart to infuse spiritual affections by some direct process under the guidance of the will. It cannot be done. He quickens his conscience thus, but he does not strengthen his soul ; 81 6 Vv. 2, 3. EXODUS VI Ver. 9. hence he is perpetually undertaking tasks beyond his strength, — making bricks without straw ; a very Egyptian slavery.' Reference. — VI. 1. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1440. THE NAMES OF GOD 1 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord ; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by My name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. '—Exodus VI. 2, 3. If we read into the first of these two verses ' Jehovah ' for ' Lord,' we shall get the exact balance and con- trast of what was here said to Moses. A name is just the utterance of character. That is its first and proper meaning. It is the putting out of a character in a human word, and that is just what God meant when He gave Himself these various names. They were intended to be such utterances as men and women could easily understand and apply by understanding them to their varied experience. The text gives us two revealings of names from God, and God Himself is careful to tell Moses that there was a progression from the one to the other, that the first was the preliminary of the second, and the second was raised, as it were, on the meaning of the first. Now the conditions of the people to whom the name was given determined these various self-revealings. I. The Progressive Revealing of the Names of God. — In general the occasions of revealing different names of God correspond in the history of Israel to special epochs in that history, or, in the broader area of the human race, they correspond with great needs of that race, and gradually, by the successive names, God tried to show mankind what He really was. All the revealings of the name of God in the Bible have crowned and culminated in one name that you find in the New Testament from the lips of Christ, the name that carried to Him most of the meaning of the Godhead and the name that He meant should carry most of the meaning of the Godhead to you, for in His last prayer to the Father He speaks in this wise : ' O, righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee,' and that name of ' Righteous Father ' is the last utterance of the Godhead as to what God is and as to how you are to name God to your own hearts and consciences. Now all down the Bible it would be an easy matter to trace historically this development of the name of God, and you must not wonder that at the beginning the name was a very primitive one, carrying rather ideas of power and might and august majesty than tenderness and gentleness and love, for the full re- vealing of God at the first would have been utterly useless, and indeed impossible. God has always re- vealed the knowledge of Himself and all other know- ledge in one way. It has been through consecrated souls and gifted minds who, as a rule, in religious revelation, have not been the official representatives of religion, have not been the priests, have not been the leaders of the religious life of their time, and have not been popular, as a rule, certainly have not had a large popular following. Abraham, Moses, as in my text, all the Hebrew prophets, the Apostles of the Lord, and Christ Himself, they were all antagon- ists of the official religion of their times, and God passed by officialism, and chose out lowly hearts and gracious minds, and through them revealed the se- quence of the names of God from lower to higher and from simple to more wondrous. And God acts on the same principle in His revealing to souls. That has been God's way, a progressive revealing of His name. II. The Meaning of the Names. — Apply it to what you have in my text. Here you have two names, ' God Almighty ' and ' Jehovah '. Now the first one, 'God Almighty,' is said here to be suitable to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but not suitable to the slaves in Egypt that Moses was to enfranchise. The other name was fit for them, namely, that great name of ' Jehovah, the Lord '. This second is an advance on the first. An inferior idea of God was given to the great saints ; a superior idea of God was given to the slaves in Egypt. What do these two names mean ? The first means simply ' divine al- mightiness,' the idea of organized power, God Al- mighty ; the second one is an altogether more involved name, and in general you may understand it in this way. It means ' The Unchanging, the Eternal, Trust- worthy One '. The name Jehovah carries in it the idea of a covenant-keeping God. By the first, the idea of power, almightiness, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were specially blessed and strengthened, and it was just what they wanted, it was just the name suitable to their condition. Round the other name of the trustworthy, covenant- keeping God, a nation of slaves was rallied and concentrated and led on to liberty and national life. Men in sorrow need more of God, the revealing of more of God's tenderness, than men in prosperity and health and strength and happiness. III. The Greater the Need the Greater the Re- velation.— The deeper the sorrow, the more the un- folding of the heart of God. The more poignant the grief, the more tender the revelation of the name of God. And that has always been God's way. The deeper the sin, the more bitter the sorrow of man, the more tenderly God has revealed Himself. The thought ought to nerve us to know that God has given us that last name because the needs of an age like this are greater than the needs of an age like that of Abraham ; more of His love has been revealed to this age than to the Apostles' age. References. — VI. 3.— J. H. Rushbrooke, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxi. 1907, p. 69. VI. 6-8.— H. W. Webb-Peploe, The Life of Privilege, p. 44. ' They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.' — Exodus vi. g. It is possible to be so disheartened by earth as to be deadened towards heaven. — C. G. Rossetti. 82 Ver. 9. EXODUS VI.-VIII Ver. 1. THE HEART'S OBSTRUCTION TO THE HEARER ' They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.' — Exodus vi. 9. I. It is not always the fault of a preacher that his message does not go home. ' They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.' There never was a better preacher, there never was a more joyous message ; but thei-e was a weight at the heart of the hearer. There was a stone at the door of the sepulchre which prevented the voice from pene- trating inside. II. Observe, there were two impediments in the heart — a positive and a negative barrier — a sense of anguish and a sense of bondage. These often exist separately. There are some who are the victims of a definite sorrow ; they have a special cause of grief which blocks the door of the heart and will let no message of comfort enter in. There are others, again, who, with- out being able to point to a special sorrow, are simply conscious of a chain about the spirit ; they have an oppression all round, a nameless weight which will not let them soar. I know not which is more deterrent to a message — the anguish or the bondage — the poign- ant grief in a single spot or the dull pain all over. Either is incompatible with the hearing of a Sermon on the Mount. III. How, then, shall I lift the stone from the door of the sepulchre, that the angel of peace may enter in ! Can I say it is summer when it is winter ! No, my Father, Thou wouldst not have me say that. But Thou wouldst have me forget, not the winter, but my winter. Thou wouldst have me remember that there are thousands like me, thousands feeling the same an- guish, thousands bearing the same bondage. Thou wouldst not have me ignore the night, but Thou wouldst have me remember that I watch not there alone. Is Peter weighted in the Garden; Thou wouldst have him call to mind that James and John are also there. Thou wouldst have him watch for one hour by the burden of James and John. Thou wouldst have him bury his own beneath the soil till he has re- turned from his mission of sympathy. Then after the night watches Thou wouldst have him go back to dis- inter his burden. Thou wouldst have him turn up the soil to uncover the spot of the burial. He will cry, ' My burden has been stolen in the night ; the place where I laid it is vacant ; I left it here, and it is here no more ; come, see the place where my grief lay ! ' So, my Father, shall he find rest— rest in Thy love.— G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 46. References.— VI. 9.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2026. 'Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. Thou shalt speak all that I command thee ; and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh.' — Exodus vn. 1-2. The literature of France has been to ours what Aaron was to Moses, the expositor of great truths which would else have perished for want of a voice to utter them with distinctness. The relation which existed between Mr. Bentham and M. Dumont is an exact 83 illustration of the intellectual relation in which the two countries stand to each other. The great dis- coveries in physics, in metaphysics, in political science, are ours. But scarcely any foreign nation except France has received them from us by direct communi- cation. Isolated by our situation, isolated by our manners, we found truth, but we did not impart it. France has been the interpreter between England and mankind. — Macaulay on Walpole's Letters. References. — VII. 3, 4. — E. L. Hull, Sermons Preached at King's Lynn (3rd Series), p. 94. ' Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers : now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments.' — Exodus vn. ii. We cannot close such a review of our five writer's without melancholy reflections. That cause which will raise all its zealous friends to a sublime eminence on the last and most solemn day the world has yet to behold, and will make them great for ever, pre- sented its claims full in sight of each of these authors in his time. The very lowest of these claims could not be less than a conscientious solicitude to beware of everything that could in any point injure the sacred cause. This claim has been slighted by so many as have lent attraction to an order of moral sentiments greatly discordant with its principles. And so, many- are gone into eternity under the charge of having employed their genius, as the magicians employed their enchantments against Moses, to counteract the Saviour of the World. — John Fosteb on The Aver- sion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion (ix.). ' Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods.' — Exodus vn. 12. Love, a myrtle wand, is transformed by the Aaron touch of jealousy into a serpent so vast as to swallow up every other stinging awe, and makes us mourn the exchange. — Coleridge. Reference. — VII. 12. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No 521. * Thus saith the Lord, Let My people go that they may serve Me.' — Exodus viii. i. And so the world went its way, controlled by no dread of retribution ; and on the tomb frescoes you '•an see legions of slaves under the lash dragging from the quarries the blocks of granite which were to form the eternal monuments of the Pharaoh's tyranny ; and you read in the earliest authentic history that when there was a fear that the slave- races should multiply so fast as to be dangerous their babies were flung to the crocodiles. One of these slave-races rose at last in revolt. Noticeably it did not rise against oppression as such, or directly in consequence of oppression. We hear of no massacre of slave-drivers, no burning of towns or villages, none of the usual accompaniments of peasant insurrections. If Egypt was plagued, it was not by mutinous mobs or incendiaries. Half a million men simply rose up and declared that they could endure no longer the mendacity, the hypocrisy, the vile and incredible rubbish which was offered to them in the sacred name of religion. ' Let us go,' they said, Ver. 15. EXODUS VIII., IX Ver. 35. ' into the wilderness, go out of these soft water- meadows and cornfields, forsake our leeks and our flesh-pots, and take in exchange a life of hardship and wandering, that we may worship the God of our fathers.' Their leader had been trained in the wisdom of the Egyptians, and among the rocks of Sinai had learnt that it was wind and vanity. The half-obscured traditions of his ancestors awoke to life again, and were rekindled by him in his people. They would bear with lies no longer. They shook the dust of Egypt from their feet, and the prate and falsehood of it from their souls, and they withdrew with all belonging to them, into the Arabian desert, that they might no longer serve cats and dogs and bulls and beetles, but the Eternal Spirit Who had been pleased to make His existence known to them. They sung no paeans of liberty. They were delivered from the house of bondage, but it was the bondage of mendacity, and they left it only to assume another service. The Eternal had taken pity on them. In revealing His true nature to them, He had taken them for His children. They were not their own, but His, and they laid their lives under commandments which were as close a copy as, with the knowledge which they possessed, they could make, to the moral laws of the Maker of the Universe. — FB.ovvv.,Short Studies,vol. n. Reference. — VIII. 1. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 322. ' But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart.' — Exodus viii. 15. I expected every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship fell down, as 1 thought, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more ; and in this agony of mind I made many vows and resolutions, that if it would please God here to spare my life this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived. . . . These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm continued, and indeed some time after ; but the next day the wind was abated and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it. . . . In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the hurry of my thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my former de- sires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made in my distress. — Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (chap. 1.). References. — VIII. 25. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1830. VIII. 28.— Ibid., vol. xxxi. No. 1830. IX. 1.— Stopford A. Brooke, The Old Testament and Modern Life, p. 129. See also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. 1894, p. 214. IX. -7.— J. J. Tetley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. 1901, p. 94. THE LONQSUFFERINQ OF GOD (For Holy Week) ' Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let My people go that they may serve Me.'— Exodus ix. 13. How solemn is the week — the Holy Week — upon which we have entered. The Church brings before our minds to-day some wonderful teaching concern- ing our own spiritual life. The record of God's dealings with Pharaoh will afford us sufficient material for our meditation. I. The Longsuffering of God towards Sinners. — Pharaoh had been insolent and blasphemous, cruel and vindictive, pitiless and false. Yet God had spared him. So longsuff'ering was He, that He even now addressed to him fresh warnings and gave him fresh signs of His power, thus by His goodness leading men to repentance. II. The Power of God to Break the Will of the most Determined Sinner — First He sends slight afflictions, then more serious ones ; finally, if the stubborn will still refuses to bend, He visits the of- fender with ' all His plagues '. III. The Fact that all Resistance of God's Will by Sinners Tends to Increase, and is Designed to Increase, His Glory. — 'The fierceness of man turns to God's praise.' Men see God's hand in the over- throw of His enemies, and His glory is thereby in- creased. The message sent by God to Pharaoh adds that the result was designed. References. — IX. 13-19. — Heber, 'God's Dealings with Pharaoh,' Sermons Preached in England, p. 146. Simeon, Works, i. p. 352. Arthur Roberts, Sermons on the Histories of Scripture, p. 257. Isaac Williams, ' Pharaoh,' Characters of Old Testament. Kingsley, ' The Plagues of Egypt,' Gospel of the Pentateuch, Sermon x. Kingsley, ' The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New,' Gospel of the Pentateuch, Sermon xi. Stanley's Jewish Church, i. p. 100, etc. Geikie, Hours with the Bible, ii. p. 147. Kitto, Daily BMe, Illustrations, ii. p. 56, Bibli- cal Things, etc., par. 745 ; and see Parker, People's Bible, ii. ; p. 312. Maurice, Patriarchs and Law-Givers, Sermon ix. Jacox, Secular Annotations, etc., i. p. 125. IX. 17. — C. Kingsley, Sermons on National Subjects, p. 325. IX. 27.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No. 113. ' And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder were ceased, he sinned yet more.' — Exodus ix. 34. God hath no sooner done thundering, than he hath done fearing. All this while you never find him care- ful to prevent any one evil, but desirous still to shift it off, when he feels it ; never holds constant to any good motion ; never prays for himself, but carelessly wills Moses and Aaron to pray for him ; never yields God, his whole demand but higgleth and dodgeth like some hard chapmen that would get a release with the cheapest. — Bishop Hall. PHARAOH ' And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the children of Israel go.' — Exodus ix. 35. I. The Lord Hardened Pharaoh's Heart — This has been taken by some to mean that Pharaoh was not a free agent ; so that the rejection of God's de- mands was not really the act of Pharaoh's free will, but was caused by God's compulsion. But if this were the case, how could God punish Pharaoh for doing what he could not help doing ? 1. Our moral sense of justice is implanted in us by God Himself. It is, therefore, impossible to conceive of God's violating that sense. 84 Ver. 7. EXODUS X Ver. 16. 2. In examining carefully the narrative we find that God is not said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart until after the sixth plague, when Pharaoh's heart had become hardened by his own free action. In other words, the first, six plagues were disciplinary, and only the last four were penal. Disciplinary suffering is that which has for its end the good of the sufferer. Penal suffering is that which has for its chief end the good of others. II. In what Way did God Harden Pharaoh's Heart? — Plainly, by the judgments and punishments which He inflicted on him. And in this there is no evidence that God treated Pharaoh otherwise than He treats all men who sin against Him. If a man hardens his heart against God's calls to repentance, whether sent by preaching or by trial and punishment into his own life, the result is that his heart becomes hardened ; and since God sent those trials, He may be said to have hardened the man's heart by sending them, although His purpose was to lead the sinner to penitence. And after such an one has become finally impenitent, God may still send judgments which will be entirely penal, and for the purpose of vindicating God's justice when theman's penitence is no longer possible. — A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, part ii. p. 311. References. — IX. 35. — ' Plain Sermons ' by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. vi. p. 49. X. 1-20. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2503. X. 3.— Ibid., vol. xliii. No. 2503. ' And Pharaoh's servants said unto him, How long shall this man be a snare unto us ? Let the men go . . . knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed ?' — Exodus x. 7. If there be any one truth which the deductions of reason alone, independent of history, would lead us to anticipate, and which again history alone would establish independently of antecedent reasoning, it is this : that a whole class of men placed permanently under the ascendancy of another as subjects, without the rights of citizens, must be a source, at the best, of weakness, and generally of danger to the State. They cannot well be expected, and have rarely been found, to evince much hearty patriotic feeling towards a community in which their neighbours looked down on them as an inferior and permanently degraded species. While kept in brutish ignorance, poverty, and weakness, they are likely to feel — like the ass in the fable — indifferent whose panniers they bear. If they increase in power, wealth, and mental develop- ment, they are likely to be ever on the watch for an opportunity of shaking off a degrading yoke. . . . Indeed almost every page of history teaches the same lesson, and proclaims in every different form, ' How long shall these men be a snare to us ? Let the people go, that they may serve their God : knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?' — Archbishop Whatei.y. In a letter, written during 1840, to awaken the upper orders of Britain to the social evils which the Chartist movement sprang from, Dr. Arnold of Rugby wrote : ' My fear with regard to every remedy that involves any sacrifices to the upper classes, is, that the public mind is not yet enough aware of the magnitude of the evil to submit to them. " Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed ? " was the question put to Pharaoh by his counsellors ; for un- less he did know it, they were aware that he would not let Israel go from serving them.' The question with me is, not whether you . have a right to render your people miserable ; but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do ; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. — Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America. References. — X. 8. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1830. X. 8, 9.— J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. 1894, p. 261. X. 11.— H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Simday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 291. PHARAOH'S 'I HAVE SINNED* ' Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste ; and he said, I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you.' — Exodus x. 16. What was Pharaoh's ' I have sinned ? ' Where did it tend ? I. It was a Mere Hasty Impulse. — ' Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste ; and he said, I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you.' There was no thought in it ; no careful dealing with his own soul ; no depth. Real repentance is never like that. It may express itself quickly. It may come suddenly to a crisis. But that which leaps to the surface is the result of much that has been going on long before in secret. II. The Moving Principle was Nothing but Fear. — He was agitated — greatly agitated — only agitated. He said it the first time under ' the hail ' ; the second, under ' the locust '. Property was going ; the land was being devastated ; his empire was impoverished ; and he exclaimed, ' I have sinned '. He simply desired to avert a punishment that was throwing a black shadow over him ! Now, fear may be, and probably it must be, a part of real repentance. But I doubt whether there was ever a real repentance that was promoted by fear only. This is the reason why so few — so very few — sick-bed repentances ever stand. They were dedicated by fear only. When the Holy Ghost gives repentance, He inspires fear ; and He also adds, what, if we may not yet call it love, yet has certainly some soft feeling — some desire towards God Himself. If you have fear, do not wish it away. But ask God to mingle something with your fear — some other view of God, which, coming in tenderly, and mellowingly, may melt fear, and make re- pentance. III. Pharaoh's Thoughts were Directed far too much to Man. — It was not the ' Against Thee, Thee only, I have sinned '. He never went straight to God. Observe what he said : ' I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you. Now, there- 85 Ver. 23. EXODUS X., XI Ver. 10. fore, forgive ' — Moses and Aaron — ' forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and intreat the Lord your God, that He may take away from me this death only '. The more God is immediate to you, there will be repentance. The more you go to Him with- out any intervention whatsoever — feeling : ' It is God I have grieved, it is God must forgive ; it is God only who can give me what I want ; it is God only who can speak peace ' — the more genuine your sorrow will be ; and the more surely it will be accepted. References. — X. 16. — J. Vaughan, Sermons Preached in Christ Church, Brighton (7th Series), p. 71. X. 20. — J. Owen, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xli. 1892, p. 166. ' But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.'— Exodus x. 23. If all Egypt had been light, the Israelites would not have had the less ; but to enjoy that light alone, while their neighbours lived in thick darkness, must make them more sensible of their privilege. Dis- tinguishing mercy affects more than any mercy. — Baxter, Saints' Rest, chap. in. ' In the great majority of things,' said John Foster, ' habit is a greater plague than ever afflicted Egypt ; in religious character it is eminently a felicity.' References. — X. 24. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1830. X. 26.— Ibid. vol. vi. No. 309. Ibid. vol. xxxi. No. 1830. XI. 1-10. — A. Maclareu, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 33. DIFFERENCES IN CHARACTER ' That ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.' — Exodus xi. 7. That there are diversities in human character and conduct, in human fortune and destiny, no one ques- tions. The atheist sees in such diversities the result of circumstances and, since in his view there is no con- trolling mind in the universe, of inexplicable caprice. The Christian, on the contrary, believes that in these diversities there exists, though it is not alway dis- coverable, the operation of Divine wisdom, and even of Divine benevolence. The providence of God and the moral nature of man are sufficient, if both were fully understood, to account for all. 1. What is Implied in this Difference ? — 1. Divine ivisdom. — What is inexplicable is not arbitrary, but is the outworking of a wisdom beyond the human. Why the Almighty chose Israel to be the depository of a revealed truth, and left Egypt to work its own way unaided save by the light of nature, we cannot tell. But so it was ; and Israel was informed by Jehovah that this election was owing to no native moral excellence in the object of Divine choice. 2. Difference in religious position. — There was, however, in the case before us, a difference in the religious position of the two nations. The Egyptians were idolaters ; the Hebrews, with all their ignorance, carnality, and obstinacy, were worshippers of Jehovah. Israel was thus called to a higher platform of pro- bation. Apostasy in Israel was a fouler sin than polytheism in Egypt. Life is not always accord- ing to privilege, and higher privilege often, alas ! becomes the occasion of sorer condemnation. Yet to be trained in a Christian land and in the knowledge of the Christian faith is in itself a ' difference ' for which it behoves us to offer daily thanks. 3. Difference in the Purposes of God. — There was a difference in the purpose which God had in view regarding the two peoples. It would be childish to suppose that the providence of God had no appointed place for Egypt in the world's great plan, but it would be unreasonable as well as unbelieving to fail to recog- nize in Israel's vocation the counsels of the Omniscient Ruler. Alike for individuals and for communities there is appointed by God's wisdom a special work. One man, one nation, cannot step into another's place. II. What Results from this Difference? — 1. A difference in Divine treatment. — Jehovah treated the Egyptians in one way, the Israelites in another. The Scripture narrative points out the hand of God in this. It is well and wise when the ways of Provi- dence perplex us to say, ' It is the Lord.' 2. A difference in human responsibility. — There are degrees in men's knowledge of the Lord's will, and there are corresponding degrees in the measure of accountability. 3. A difference in the ultimate issues of proba- tion.-— -There is no reason to believe in a dead level of uniformity among spiritual beings in the future any more than in the present. References. — XI. 7. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 305. 'And the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart.' — Exodus xi. 10. .-Eschylus recognizes in certain forms of mental blindness a Divine influence. There is a malady of the mind, a heaven-sent hurt, which drives the sinner to destruction. This infatuation or Ate is a clouding both of heart and of intellect ; it is also both the penalty and the parent of crime. But only when a man has wilfully set his face towards evil, when, like Xerxes in the Persae, or Ajax in the play of Sophocles, he has striven to rise above human limits, or like Creon in the Antigone has been guilty of obdurate impiety, is a moral darkening inflicted on him in anger. Here ^Eschylus and Sophocles agree. As we read in the Old Testament that ' the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart,' so in ^Eschylus, ' when a man is hasting to his ruin, the god helps him on '. It is the dark con- verse of ' God helps those who help themselves '. — Prof. Butcher, Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 115 f. References. — XII. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1092. C. Kingsley, Sermons on National Subjects, p. 337. XII. — Rutherford Waddell, Behold the Lamb of God, p. 41. XII. 1, 2. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1637. XII. 1-14. — A. Maclareu, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, p. 38. XII. 1-20.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No. 2727. XII. 1- 27.— Ibid. vol. Hi. No. 3013. XII. 1-29.— T. A. Gurney, The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, p. 57. XII. 3, 4. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No. 2937. XII. 3, 23.— A. Murray, The Children for Christ, p. 77. 86 Ver. 26. EXODUS XII Ver. 35. ' With bitter herbs they shall eat it'— Exodus xii. 8. Christianity, considered as a moral system, is made up of two elements, beauty and severity ; whenever either is indulged to the loss or disparagement of the other, evil ensues. . . . Even the Jews, to whom this earth was especially given, and who might be sup- posed to be at liberty without offence to satiate them- selves in its gifts, were not allowed to enjoy it without restraint. Even the Paschal Lamb, their great typi- cal feast, was eaten ' with bitter herbs '. — Newman, Sermons on Subjects of the Day, pp. 120-121. References. — XII. 8. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No. 2727. XII. 13.— Ibid. vol. v. No. 228 ; ibid. vol. xxi. No. 1251 ; see also Twelve Sermons on the Atonement, p. 25. XII. 14. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 317. XII.— 21-22.— J. McNeill, Regent Square Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 33. XII. 21-27. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1988 ; see also Twelve Sermons to Young Men, p. 252. ' Your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service ? ' — Exodus xii. 26. ' What then,' asks the author of Let Youth But Know (p. 50), ' is the fundamental task of a liberal education ? What should be its constant endeavour ? Surely to awaken and to keep ever alert the faculty of wonder in the human soul. To take life as a matter of course — whether painful or pleasurable — - that is the true spiritual death. From the body of that death it is the task of education to deliver us.' THE MEANING OF THE OBSERVANCE OF EASTER ' And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service ? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptian.' — Exodus xii. 26, 27. Take the first things commemorated by the Jewish Passover, and see how they are fulfilled in the Chris- tian's Easter. I. The Passover told, first, of the deliverance from the misery of Egyptian bondage ; and Easter tells of man's deliverance from a bondage worse than that of Egypt — the bondage of sin. II. The Passover commemorated the means by which the Israelites were delivered — the death of the first-born, the substituted blood of the lamb. And this is what Good Friday and Easter preaches to the Christian — the love of God, Who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all — the power of Christ's resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, by which we are freed from the bonds of our sins, and are raised with Him. III. The Jews were reminded by the Passover that the Agent of their deliverance was none other than Jehovah Himself, Who overthrew their enemies and brought them safely through the Red Sea. And we are reminded that the Agent of our sanctification is the Holy Ghost, by whose special grace preventing us all good desires are poured into our hearts, and by whose operation in the sacraments both actual and sanctifying grace are conveyed to our souls. IV. We observe that in the feast of the Passover was fulfilled God's command, ' This day shall be unto you for a memorial ; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations ; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever'. The Passover, like other Jewish rites, has been abrogated ; or, rather, has been taken up into and fulfilled in its highest sense in the sacrifice of the altar, whereby, according to our Lord's holy institu- tion, we ' continue a perpetual memory of that His precious death until His coming again '. — A. G. Mor- timer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, part ii. p. 336. References. — XII. 26.- — Henry Alford, Quebec Chapel Ser- mons, vol. i. p. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxviii. No. 2268. XII. 26, 27.— R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. ii. p. 343. A. Murray, The Children for Christ, p. 84. ' And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Eeypt . . . there was not a house where there was not one dead.' — Exodus xii. 29-30. Speaking in favour of peace with Russia, John Bright once employed this passage most effectively in the House of Commons. ' I do not suppose,' he said, ' that your troops are to be beaten in actual conflict with the foe, or that they will be driven into the sea ; but I am certain that many homes in England in which there now exists a fond hope that the dis- tant one may return — many such homes may be rendered desolate when the next mail shall arrive. The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land ; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on ; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.' References. — XII. 29. — T. A. Gurney, The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, p. 57. XII. 30. — A. Ainger, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. 1901, p. 91. ' And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.' — Exodus xii. 34. No one doctrine can be named which starts complete at first, and gains nothing afterwards from the in- vestigations of faith and the attacks of heresy. The Church went forth irom the old world in haste, as the Israelites from Egypt ' with their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders '. — Newman, Development of Christian Doctrine (chap. n. 1). ' And the children of Israel borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment.'— Exodus xii. 35. Writing, in his Letters (p. 42), of one practical pro- blem which emerged at the time of the slave emanci- pation in America, Dr. John Ker observes : ' While the slave owes nothing to the system except to run away from it, there may have been, and I believe were, masters who held up the chains they could not break, and made the system, in fact, not slavery, and a «' Ver. 38. EXODUS XII., XIII Ver. 14. runaway slave might owe such a master something in honour. The Israelites borrowed — asked — -jewels from the Egyptians — their kept back wages, I suppose — but then we live under a more generous economy.' ' And a mixed multitude went up also with them.' — Exodus xii. 38. Aberrations there must ever be, whatever the doc- trine is, while the human heart is sensitive, capricious, and wayward. A mixed multitude went out of Egypt with the Israelites. There will ever be a number of persons professing the opinions of a movement party, who talk loudly and strangely, do odd or fierce things, display themselves unnecessarily, and disgust other people ; persons too young to be wise, too generous to be cautious, too warm to be sober, or too intellectual to be humble. Such persons will be very apt to attach themselves to particular persons, to use par- ticular names, to say things merely because others do, and to act in a party-spirited way. — Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, p. 99. THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF EXODUS ' All the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt'— Exodus xii. 41. The story of Exodus is the story of a Divine de- liverance. I. This story of deliverance is in its first stage a story of an awakening. When God came to Israel in Egypt he found her in bondage. She was the slave of Pharaoh, fulfilling his purpose and doing his work. But Pharaoh had no right to Israel's services — Israel belonged to God. What she needed was awakening to a sense of her true dignity and her high destiny. Now this awakening God brought about in a twofold way : — I. By increasing the severity of the oppression until it became unbearable. Then the children of Israel sighed by reason of their bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. % And then, j ust as this national conscience was awaking, God sent Moses to nurse it into vigorous life. II. The awakening past, the story begins. A story of struggle. When Israel awoke to desire deliverance and to work for it, there began one of the greatest struggles in the world's history. Israel never knew how strong the arm of Pharaoh was until she tried to shake herself loose from it — just as no man knows what a grip sin has on him until he strives to be free from it ; but the moment Israel awoke it began. God then fought for Israel, as He always fights for the soul who is seeking to be His. So the story of struggle becomes a story of de- liverance. In this story of deliverance two things are specially emphasized : (1) that from beginning to end the deliverance was the work of God ; (2) that this deliverance was a deliverance through blood- shedding. All the might of the first nine plagues did not avail. It required the knife that shed the blood of the Paschal Lamb to sever the cords that kept the Israelites slaves. III. Having recorded the Deliverance, the book takes a step forward and becomes a story of Guidance and Instruction. With this story the greater part of the book is filled. From the Red Sea Israel is led to Sinai. Instruction is the necessaiy sequence of deliverance. So Israel is brought to Sinai to receive it. There God gives a law, obedience to which will furnish the fullest expression for a godly life. But after the laws for the regulation of life have been given there follow laws for the regulation of worship. It is important then for us to note this : While our whole life is to be a life of worship, re- cognition of this must not prevent our engaging in special acts of worship. But when we worship God, God desires that in our worship we should accept His guidance. Therefore after the laws for the regulation of life come the directions for the making of the Tabernacle. And then the current of the book is for the time changed to remind us that, in the life of the saved, there is always the possibility of backsliding. The book of Exodus would be distinctly less valuable, and its picture of the spiritual life dis- tinctly less complete, had it not contained the story of the Golden Calf. The last six chapters of the book are devoted to a record of how Moses, in implicit obedience to the orders he had received, made the Tabernacle. And how does the story close ? ' So Moses finished the work . . . and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle.' That was the supreme reward of Israel's obedience. By her obedience she became a people among whom God dwelt. The Lord her God was in the midst of her, blessing her, saving her, guiding her in all her journeys, until he led her right into the promised land. — G. H. C. Macgregor, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 17. Reference. — XII. 41. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii. No. 55. ' It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt.' — Exodus xii. 42. The lesson taught to Pharaoh and to Israel on that awful, that joyous night of deliverance, is still a living lesson; not one jot of its force is abated. God neither slumbers nor sleeps. He watches ever. Not one slip passes unrecorded in the heavenly vol- ume. . . . This is the first lesson taught by our watch-night — the lesson of the sleepless justice of God, which brings home at last the sin to the guilty, and which remembers pitifully, lovingly, every suf- fering soul that sin has wronged. — Morris Joseph, The Ideal in Judaism, p. 65. References. — XII. 42. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1092. XII. 48.— W. Binnie, Sermons, p. 72. XIII. 1, 13- 15.— A. Murray, The Children for Christ, p. 92. XIII. 8.— C. S. Robinson, Simon Peter, p. 63. XIII. 9. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 46. ' When thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? thou shalt answer him.' — Exodus xhi. 14. Compare Mr. A. R. Wallace's remark on Darwin in whose character, he observed, ' the restless curiosity of the child to know the " what for ? " the " why ? " 88 Ver. 17. EXODUS XIII Ver. 19. and the " how ? " of everything seems never to have abated its force '. References.— XIII. 14-17— F. D. Maurice, The Doctrine of Sacrifice, p. 49. NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S ' God led them not through the way of the land of the Philis- tines although that was near.'— Exodus xiii. 17. I. That, then, was one feature of God's guidance. It shunned the near road, and it took the round- about ; and if you have been living with the open eye, and watching the method of the Divine in things, you have seen much that is analogous to this. 1. Think of the discovery of nature's secrets : of coal, of iron, of steam, of electricity. A single whis- per from God would have communicated everything, and put mankind in possession of the secrets. But God never led us that way, though that way was near. 2. Or rising upward, think of the coming of Jesus. I detect the same leadership of God in that. Surely, in response to the world's need, He might have come a thousand years before ! But God had no near way to Bethlehem. He led the world about, and through the desert, before He brought it to the King at Na- zareth. We see now that there was a fullness of the time. There was kindness and education on the road. 3. There is one other region where a similar guid- ance of God is very evident. I refer to the evangel- izing of the world. Slowly, by a man here, and by a woman there, and the men not saints, but of like passions with ourselves — and by unceasing labour, and by unrecorded sacrifice, the world is being led to know of Jesus. II. I have noticed that most of the high and generous souls — the gallant spirits of the two coven- ants, let me say — have been tempted with the temp- tation to take the near-cut, and in the power of God have conquered it. 1. Take Abraham, for instance. Tempted by the near road, he refused it. He felt by faith that God's ways were roundabout. 2. Or think of David. When at last, after Mount Gilboa, he came to his throne by the way that God appointed, I wan-ant you he felt God's ways were best. 3. Or think with all reverence of Jesus Christ, tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. Why did He come to earth to live and die for us, but that the kingdoms of this world might become His. And the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and saith to Him : ' All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me '. It was the old temptation. I speak with utmost rever- ence— it was Jesus being tempted by near ways. And when I think of the long road of Jesus, round by the villages, and through the Garden, and on the Cross, and into the grave, I feel, if I never felt it in my life before, that near-cuts are not God's. — G. H. Morri- son, Sun-Rise, p. 64. References.— XIII. 17, 18.— J. Day Thompson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. 1898, p. 134. 'THE BONES OF JOSEPH:' A PATHETIC IN- SPIRATION ' And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him.' — Exodus xiii. 19. I. We cannot Dissociate Ourselves from the Past. — In all our exoduses we carry ' the bones of Joseph ' with us. We cannot ignore the past. As Dr. Punshon expresses it, 'Part of the past to all the present cleaves '. There is an historic past from which we desire never to be severed. We are its heirs. There is a past we long to be dissociated from : the evil of history. Then the personal past follows us. There is an individual past from which we would on no account be divided. But our past of personal evil shadows us. Seeing we all have a painful past — all, at least whose consciences are awakened — what is our wisdom ? Ever have recourse to Him Who can expunge the guilt of the past. Ever make the most of the present. Soon our present will be our past. II. Mortality marks the Noblest. — The brand of mortality is on us all. It were madness to forget this lesson of the ' hallowed burden ' Israel bore. III. The Great and Good Departed should not be Forgotten. — It is abundantly to the credit of Moses that in the hour of triumphant exodus, with all the responsibility of leadership upon him, he did not forget the director of the Egyptian empire to whom Israel owed so much. Contemplate the departed saints and emulate their faith. IV. We should Fulfil the Injunctions of the Sainted Ones. — ' Moses took the bones of Joseph with him.' This strange act had been directly en- joined by Joseph. The laying of that behest upon Israel was an illustration of Joseph's wonderful faith as well as of his ingrained love of his people. V. The Past gives Inspiration for Future Ex- periences.— We need, amid the routine of duties, all manner of inspiration, and here is one type. Re- member the past. Recollect what, by God's grace, others have been and done. God did not fail our fathers, and they did not fail God. The past inspires us for trials and sorrows. What God has done for tired and suffering saints in ages gone, He will do again. The history of the Church, and the biographies of Christians, are replete with inspiration for the chequered experiences of the un- known to-morrow. VI. ' Moses took the Bones of Joseph with him.' — But it is not enough to have the hero's bones. Moses did not take Joseph's bones alone. He had Joseph's faith, Joseph's calibre of soul, Joseph's spirit, Joseph's heroism ; all this, and yet more abundantly. There is really danger lest, instead of using the splendid past, we abuse it. What an irony to have Joseph's bones with you, but not his spirit in you ! This is a danger alike of Churches and of individuals. The noblest memorial of a hero is the reproduction ot his heroism. Ver. 21. EXODUS XIII Ver. 21. VII. The Good Succession does not Perish. — Joseph is dead, but Moses lives to be Israel's Liberator and Leader. VIII. We may Inspire Future Generations. — They who lead a Joseph-like life shall have a Joseph- like influence upon others. IX. ' Moses took the Bones of Joseph with him.' — Yet God's Presence is the Essential Presence. The sombre presence of the dead was not the supreme presence among the Israelites as they marched to the bounds of Canaan. Hear the words of the twenty-first verse — ' And the Lord went before them '. Without that august Presence it is vain to have ' the bones of Joseph '. He is everything. — Dinsdale T. Young, Unfamiliar Texts, p. 102. ' And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way ; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light ; to go by day and night' — Exodus xiii. 21. In his Autobiographic Sketches De Quincey applies this figure to his sister Elizabeth. ' For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola in token of thy premature intellectual grandeur — thou whose head, for its superb developments, was the astonish- ment of science — thou who wert summoned away from our nursery ; and the night which for me gathered upon that event ran after my steps far into life ; and perhaps at this day I resemble little for good or for ill that which else I should have been. Pillar of fire that didst go before me to guide and to quicken — pillar of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to God, that didst too truly reveal to my dawn- ing fears the secret shadow of death ! ' To increase the reverence for Human Intellect or God's Light, and the detestation of Human Stupidity or the Devil's Darkness, what method is there ? No method — except even this, that we should each of us pray for it. . . . Such reverence, I do hope, and even discover and observe, is silently yet extensively going on among us even in these sad years. In which small salutary fact there burns for us, in this black coil of universal baseness fast becoming universal wretched- ness, an inextinguishable hope ; far-off but sure, a Divine ' pillar of fire by night '. Courage, courage. — Carlyle, Latter-day Pamphlets, iii. ' Cromwell and his officers,' says Carlyle once again in the sixth lecture on Heroes, ' armed soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be ; a little band of Chris- tian Brothers, who had drawn the sword against a great black devouring world not Christian but Mam- monish, devilish — they cried to God in their strait, in their extreme need, not to forsake the cause that was His. The light which now rose upon them, — how could a human soul, by any means at all, get better light ? Was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed without hesitation any more ? To them it was as the shining of Heaven's own splendour, in the waste- howling darkness ; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them in their desolate, perilous way. Was it not such? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same— devout prostration of the earnest, struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light ; be such prayer a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one? There is no other method.' Again, in his essay on The Life and Writings of Werner, he observes : ' The subject of Religion, in one shape or another, nay of propagating it in new purity by teaching and preaching, had nowise van- ished from his meditation. On the contrary, we can perceive that it still formed the master-principle of his soul, " the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night," which guided him, so far as he had any guidance, in the pathless desert of his now solitary, barren and cheerless existence.' In his Loss and Gain (Vol. II. chap, ix.) Newman de- picts an undergraduate's religion as follows : ' Charles' characteristic, perhaps more than anything else, was an habitual sense of the Divine Presence — a sense which, of course, did not ensure uninterrupted con- formity of thought and deed to itself, but still there it was ; the pillar of the cloud before him and guiding him. He felt himself to be God's creature, and re- sponsible to Him ; God's possession, not his own.' The access to the Scriptures was no more the actual cause of Luther's spiritual revolution than were the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire the cause of the departure of Israel from Egypt. But for the Scrip- tures, indeed, Luther and his followers might have perished in the desert of fanaticism after their exodus from Rome. But the pillar and cloud which guided the Reformer's steps were not made visible until the sands of the untravelled waste were already flying around their path, and the brick-kilns of their task- masters were lost behind them in the distance. — R. H. Huiton, Theological Essays, p. 396. THE PROPHETIC ELEMENT ' And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way ; and by night m a pillar of fire, to give them light ; that they might go by day and by night' — Exodus xiii. 21. Here we see in a figure the fact that God goes before the race; anticipating, providing, adjusting, so that in due season He may bring us into the Canaan of His accomplished purpose. The most cursory view of the world and history impresses one with the feel- ing that all things have been thought out before- hand ; and closer examination, revealing how the sense of the future dominates the present, confirms us in the belief of a supernatural, prescient govern- ment that controls individual life and universal movement to some ulterior perfection. This special aspect we desire now to consider. I. The Divine Preparation of the Earth as the Scene for Human Life and Discipline furnishes an 90 Ver. 21. EXODUS XIII Ver. 22. instructive illustration of our text. Ages before man's advent on this planet we behold the Divine hand fashioning it for his habitation. The darkness that ' rested upon the face of the waters ' was the hiding of the creative Spirit whilst He resolved the rude elements into order and beauty. Think of the cloud of the carboniferous era eclipsing the sun and wrapping everything in awful shadow ! Yet the fire and darkness of geologic ages were pillars of the Lord heralding a new earth. What a firm ground of confidence we find here touching the abiding welfare of the race ! Pessi- mistic spirits are fond of propounding sceptical conundrums respecting the future. What will pos- terity do when the forests are depleted ? what when the coal measures fail ? what when population out- strips the means of subsistence? How truly absurd these apprehensions are ! As the need arises, our scientists open to us storehouses which have been sealed from the foundation of the world. They are ever discovering new elements, lights, forces, fruits, which our fathers knew not. The ' faithful Creator ' has in reserve a thousand secret magazines which He will discover as the race reaches its successive stages of development. Nature abounds with signs that God has passed this way before, that He has antici- pated us with the blessings of His goodness, and means to see His children through. II. The Government of the Race supplies another illustration of the Divine prescience. The future con- stitutes the main thought of revelation ; and it every- where teaches that the government of the world at any given point is regulated by a concern for the future, for a distant future. The whole of revelation is pervaded by the thought of the future ; and so far it is in correspondence with the accredited science of the age. ' The Lord went before them in a cloud.' His purpose is always beyond the present ; and the present is shaped and disciplined with a view to that ultimate design which shall justify the whole pro- cess. In the history of Israel, we venture to think, we have an illustration on a small scale of God's larger method of government. ' Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt : Thou preparedst room before it.' Pales- tine was prepared for Israel. ' He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant.' Joseph set in motion a train of events which prepared Israel to take possession of Palestine. Is not this process of adjustment and progress ever going on in the wide world and in the sweep of the ages ? Surely God is preparing waste lands as theatres of new empire, in due season to be occupied by elect nations. We cannot contemplate vast regions of the earth now opening up, climes rich with possibilities, with- out anticipating the period when they will be in- herited by mighty populations yet unborn. They are the waiting Canaans of God's predestined ones. What, then, is our consolation amid the nebulousness and perplexity of human life ? That our times are in His hands who knows the future, and whose attri- bute of prescience ever works on our behalf. Sydney Smith's counsel that we should take ' short views ' is excellent; but the justification of the short view is that we hold the hand of One who takes the long view. III. The Divine Anticipation of our Spiritual Need affords another proof of the prescient element of the world. When the morning stars sang for joy over the new-made and radiant world, they could never have guessed that it was destined to become the stage of tragedy. They would only have prophesied for it golden ages of glory and joy. The event, however, has proved far otherwise. The rosy dawn was followed by a long sad day ; let us rather say, by a long dark night. Yet here again God went before the race in the provision of His mercy. All the scenes and experiences of life are antidated by grace. Nature is full of prevision. ' Spring hides behind autumn's mask ; ' and as Richard Jefferies puts it, ' The butterflies of next summer are somewhere under the snow '. The future dominates all nature, and the observer marks prophetic signs in every living thing. We have seen that the same is true in the evolution of society ; the general life of to-day being determined by considerations transcending the pre- sent. And we feel sure that in the education and discipline of His children the future is a factor never lost sight of by the Heavenly Father. ' Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.' IV. That Christ has gone before us into the Heavenly Place shall furnish our final illustration. ' A cloud received Him out of their sight.' As in a cloud the Creator went before us, fashioning this world for our indwelling, so in the cloud of the As- cension has the Redeemer gone before us to make ready a new sphere of beauty and delight. ' I go to prepare a place for you,' was His solemn assurance in the parting hour — an assurance that He is fulfilling every day for thousands of His people. ' For Christ entered not into a holy place made with hands, like a pattern to the true ; but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us.' As in the ancient time He prepared Palestine for Israel, so now He prepares the sphere of glory for the saints, and makes the saints meet for their inheritance in light. — W. L Watkinsov, The Fatal Barter, pp. 110-126. Reference.— XIII. 21. — G. H. Morrison, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxii. 1902, p. 415. ' He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.'— Exodus xiii. 22. Such was to be our Church, a church not made with hands, catholic, universal, all whose stones should be living stones, its officials the cherubim of Love and Knowledge, its worship wiser and purer action than has before been known to men. To such a Church men do indeed constitute the state, and men indeed we hope form the American Church and State, men so truly human that they could not live while those made in their own likeness were bound down to the con- dition of brutes. Should such hopes be baffled, should such a Church fall in the building, should such a state 91 Ver. 22. EXODUS XII I., XIV Ver. 15. find no realization except to the eye of the poet, God would still be in the world, and surely guide each bird, that can be patient, on the wing to its home at last. But expectations so noble, which find so broad a basis in the past, which link it so harmoniously with the future, cannot lightly be abandoned. The same Power leads by a pillar of cloud as by a pillar of fire — the Power that deemed even Moses worthy only of a distant view of the Promised Land. — Mar- garet Fuller. Dm you ever think of the spiritual meaning of the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, as connected with our knowledge and our ignorance, our light and our darkness, our gladness and our sorrow ? The everyday use of this Divine alternation to the wandering children of Israel is plain enough. Darkness is best seen against light, and light against darkness ; and its use, in a deeper sense of keeping forever before them the immediate presence of God in the midst of them, is not less plain ; but I some- times think, that we who also are still in the wilder- ness, and coming up from our Egypt and its flesh-pots, and on our way, let us hope, through God's grace, to the celestial Canaan, may draw from these old-world signs and wonders that, in the midday of knowledge, with daylight all about us, there is, if one could but look for it, that perpetual pillar of cloud — that sacred darkness which haunts all human knowledge, often the most at its highest noon ; that ' look that threatens the profane ' ; that something, and above all that sense of some one, that Holy One, who in- habits eternity and its praises, who makes darkness His secret place, His pavilion round about, darkness and thick clouds of the sky. And again, that in the deepest, thickest night of doubt, of fear, of sorrow, of despair ; that then, and all the most then — if we will look in the right airt, and with the seeing eye and the understanding heart — there may be seen that pillar of fire, of light and of heat, to guide and quicken and cheer ; knowledge and love, that everlasting love which we know to be the Lord's. — Dr. John Brown in Horas Subsecivce. Compare also the last paragraph of Huxley's essay on ' Administrative Nihilism ' with its account of true education, which, among other benefits, ' promotes morality and refinement, by teaching men to discipline themselves, and by leading them to see that the highest, as it is the only permanent, content is to be attained, not by grovelling in the rank and steam- ing valleys of sense, but by continual striving towards those high peaks, where, resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest Good — " a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night".' References. — XIV. — T. A. Gurney, The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, p. 57. XIV. 2. — H. H. Snell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 395. XIV. 3.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvii. No. 2188. XIV. 10 and 15.— H. E. Piatt, Church Times, vol. xliii. 1900, p. 60. ' Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.'— Exodus xiv. 13. In explaining (Apologia, pp. 262 f.) why he had not come forward in defence of Catholic truth against the scientific heresies of the age, Newman writes : ' It seemed to be specially a time in which Christians had a call to be patient, in which they had no other way of helping those who were alarmed than that of ex- horting them to have a little faith and fortitude and to " beware," as the poet says, " of dangerous steps." ' In this policy he also felt the Papal authorities would support him. ' And I interpret recent acts of that authority as fulfilling my expectation ; I interpret them as tying the hands of a controversialist, such as I should be, and teaching us that true wisdom which Moses inculcated on his people, when the Egyptians were pursuing them, " fear ye not, stand still ; the Lord shall fight for you, ye shall hold your peace ".' Faith, whether we receive it in the sense of adher- ence to resolution, obedience to law, regardfulness of promise, in which from all time it has been the test, as the shield, of the true being and life of man ; or in the still higher sense of trustfulness in the pre- sence, kindness, and word of God, in which form it has been exhibited under the Christian dispensation. For, whether in one or other form — whether the faithfulness of men whose path is chosen and portion fixed, in the following and receiving of that portion, as in the Thermopylae camp ; or the happier faith- fulness of children in the good giving of their Father, and of subjects in the conduct of their king, as in the ' Stand still and see the salvation of God ' of the Red Sea shore, there is rest and peacefulness, the ' standing still ' in both, the quietness of action determined, of spirit unalarmed, of expectation un- impatient. — Ruskin, Modem Painters (vol. 11.). References. — XIV. 13. — H. H. Snell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 395. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 541. ' Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.' — Exodus xiv. 15. The Elizabethan seamen, says Froude in his essay on 'England's Forgotten Worthies,' in all seas and spheres 'are the same indomitable God-fearing men whose life was one great liturgy. " The ice was strong, but God was stronger," says one of Frobisher's men, after grinding a night and a day among the icebergs, not waiting for God to come down and split the ice for them, but toiling through the long hours himself and the rest fending all the vessel with poles and planks, with death glaring at them out of the rocks.' Dr. W. C. Smith quoted this text at the Jubilee Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1893. He said : ' When Moses first appeared before Pharaoh, all he asked was that the people might be allowed to go a three days' journey into the desert that they might offer to the Lord those sacrifices which it was not lawful to offer in Egypt, where bulls and goats 92 Ver. 16. EXODUS XIV Ver. 27. were not sacrifices but deities. There was no sort of deception in that request. Moses, you may be very certain, honestly meant to return as soon as the religious rites had been performed. But when Israel had left Goshen the very first word that God said to his servant was " Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward ". Nulla vestigia retrorsum. Their way lay onward and they were to realize the great history and the noble destiny to which they had been appointed.' References. — XIV. 15. — R. Nicholl*, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxviii. 1890, p. 138. F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. 1901, p. 1. J. H. Devonport, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. 1902, p. 253. W. Ross Taylor, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxvi. 1904, p. 168. H. H. Snel], Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 395. Bishop Creighton, University and other Sermons, p. 160. J. Vaughan, Sermons Preached in Christ Church, Briyhton, (7th Series), p. 15. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 548 ; ibid. vol. xlix. No. 2851. 1 Lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea. — Exodus xiv. i6. When Moses held the rod over the Red Sea, he was the sign of man holding up the serpent in triumph to the view of the creation, and in right of his victory exercising dominion, long lost but now recovered. That is still a prophecy. . . . The power by which this is now carrying forward is the spirit of Christ in man's heart. This is the true preparation for the cleansing of the leprosy and the binding of Satan ; and the signs are prophetic pictures to animate hope. — Thomas Erskine. Perhaps it is not improbable that the grand moral improvements of a future age may be accomplished in a manner that shall leave nothing to man but humility and grateful adoration. His pride so obstin- ately ascribes to himself whatever good is effected on the globe, that perhaps the Deity will evince his own interposition by events as evidently independent of the right of man as the rising of the sun. It may be that some of them may take place in a manner but little connected even with human operation. Or if the activity of men shall be employed as the means of producing all of them, there will probably be as palpable a disproportion between the instrument and the events, as there was between the rod of Moses and the amazing phenomena which followed when it was stretched forth. No Israelite was foolish enough to ascribe to the rod the power that divided the sea ; nor will the witnesses of the moral wonders to come attribute them to man. — John Foster, on the Appli- cation of the Epithet Romantic, v. References. — XIV. 16. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iii. p. 320. XIV. 19.— N. M. Wright, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxii. 1907, p. 67. XIV. 19, 20.— Spurgeou, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1793. XIV. 19-31. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 52. XIV. 20.— E. E. Cleal, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiv. 1903, p. 425. ' And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea.' — Exodus xiv. 22. The Israelites, marching up to the edge of the Red Sea till the waves parted before their feet, step by step, are often taken as an illustration of what our faith should do — advance to the brink of possibility, and then the seemingly impossible may be found to open. — Dr. John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, p. 101. ' And the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians.' — Exodus xiv. 24. Compare the dialogue between Helstone and Moore in the third chapter of Shirley, where in answer to the latter's cynical remark that ' God often defends the powerful,' Helstone cries out : ' What ! I suppose the handful of Israelites standing dry-shod on the Asiatic side of the Red Sea, was more powerful than the host of the Egyptians drawn up on the African side ? Were they more numerous ? Were they better appointed ? Were they more mighty, in a word — eh ? Don't speak, or you'll tell a lie, Moore; you know you will. They were a poor over-wrought band of bondsmen. Tyrants had oppressed them through four hundred years ; a feeble mixture of women and children diluted their thin ranks ; their masters, who roared to follow them through the divided flood, were a set of pampered Ethiops, about as strong and brutal as the lions of Libya. They were armed, horsed, and charioted, the poor Hebrew wanderers were afoot ; few of them, it is likely, had better weapons than their shepherds' crooks, or their masons' building- tools ; their meek and mighty leader himself had only his rod. But bethink you, Robert Moore, right was with them ; the God of Battles was on their side. Crime and the lost archangel generalled the ranks of Pharaoh, and which triumphed ? We know that well : "The Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore " ; yea, " the depths covered them, they sank to the bottom as a stone". The right hand of the Lord became glorious in power ; the right hand of the Lord dashed in pieces the enemy ! ' ' You are all right ; only you forget the true parallel : France is Israel, and Napoleon is Moses. Europe, with her old over-gorged empires and rotten dynasties, is corrupt Egypt ; gallant France is the Twelve Tribes, and her fresh and vigorous Usurper the Shep- herd of Horeb.' ' I scorn to answer you.' ' And the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.' — Exodus xiv. 27. Napoleon, when at Suez, made an attempt to follow the supposed steps of Moses by passing the creek at this point ; but it seems, according to the testimony of the people of Suez, that he and his horsemen managed the matter in a way more resembling the failure of the Egyptians than the success of the Israelites. According to the French account, Napoleon got out of the difficulty by that warrior-like presence of mind which served him so well when the fate of nations depended on the decision of a moment ; he commanded his horsemen to disperse in all direc- tions, in order to multiply the chances of finding shallow water, and was thus enabled to discover a 93 Ver. 29. EXODUS XIV., XV Vv. 13-18. line by which he and his people were extricated. The story told by the people of Suez is very different ; they declare that Napoleon parted from his horse, got water-logged and nearly drowned, and was only fished out by the aid of the people on shore. — Kinglake, Eothen, chap. xxu. ' But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea.' — Exodus xiv. 29. The sack of Jewry after Jewry was the sign of popular triumph during the Barons' War. With its close fell on the Jews the more terrible persecution of the law. . . .At last persecution could do no more, and on the eve of his struggle with Scotland, Edward, eager for popular favour, and himself swayed by the fanaticism of his subjects, ended the long agony of the Jews by their expulsion from the realm. Of the six- teen thousand who preferred exile to apostasy few reached the shores of France. Many were wrecked, others robbed and flung overboard. One shipmaster turned out a crew of wealthy merchants on to a sandbank, and bade them call a new Moses to save them from the sea. — Green, Short History of English People, pp. 198-199. References. — XIV. 30. — Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, p. 55. C. Brown, The Birth of a Nation, p. 130. ' And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians : and the people feared the Lord.' — Exodus xiv. Some believe the better for seeing Christ's sepulchre ; and, when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the miracle. Now contrarily, I bless myself and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles ; that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea ; nor one of Christ's patients, on whom he wrought His wonders ; then had my faith been thrust upon me ; nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all who believe and saw not. — Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (pt. i.). References. — XV. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2301. XV. 1, 2.— Ibid. vol. xxxi. No. 1867. XV. 1-21.— Ibid. vol. xliv. No. 2509. ' The Lord is ray strength and song, and He is become my salvation : He is my God.' — Exodus xv. 2. Happy the heart that has learned to say my God ! All religion is contained in that short expression, and all the blessedness that man or angel is capable of. — Thomas Erskine. ' He is my God . . . my father's God.' Compare the early reflection of Dr. John G. Paton, the New Hebrides missionary, as he watched the piety of his old father in the home : ' He walked with God ; why may not I ? ' Lord, I find my Saviour's genealogy strangely chequered with four remarkable changes in four immediate generations : — 1. Rehoboam begat Abijam : i.e. a bad father begat a bad son. 2. Abijam begat Asa : i.e. a bad father begat a good son. 3. Asa begat Jehoshaphat : i.e. a good father be- gat a good son. 4. Jehoshaphat begat Joram : i.e. a good father begat a bad son. I see, Lord, from this that my father's piety cannot be entailed : that is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always hereditary : that is good news for my son. — Thomas Fuller. References. — XV. 2. — R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. i. p. 53. XV. 2-13. — A. Maclaren, Expositions1 of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 61. ' The Lord is a Man of war.' — Exodus xv. 3. It may help us to understand the scrupulous regard for the rights of the God of War entertained by the Gauls, the Hebrews, and other nations of antiquity, if we look for a moment at the traces of this feeling which manifest themselves among the civilized nations of modem times : I need only allude to the singing of solemn Te Deums after victory, or to our praying in this country that our Queen ' may be strengthened to vanquish and overcome all her enemies,' and to our adorning our cathedrals with the tattered flags of the foreigner. That ' the Lord is a Man of war ' is a sentiment by no means confined to the song of Moses ; it is found to be still a natural one ; and I need only remind you of the poet Wordsworth's ode for the English thanksgiving on the morning of the 18th day of January, 1816, and more especially the following lines : — The fierce tornado sleeps within thy courts- He hears the word — he flies — And navies perish in their ports ; For thou art an^ry with thine enemies. Rhys, Celtic Heathenism, p. 52. ANTICIPATIONS OF FAITH ' Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed : Thou hast guided them in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation,' etc. — Exodus xv. 13-18. ' Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed.' He had only led them forth a single night's journey, but in that single night's journey they saw the completion of the whole long journey they were to take. In the anticipation of faith victory is already obtained before the war has commenced. I. When we come to ask ourselves the secret of this triumphant anticipation we shall find that it is all ex- pressed in one single sentence — ' Thou hast redeemed '. The joyful confidence of the Israelites sprang not merely from the abstract consideration that the God Who had shown Himself so strong to save already, was capable of any further exhibition of strength that might be demanded of Him. Beyond all that there was the consideration that the deliverance of the pre- sent was a part of one grand purpose completed already in the mind of God ; a purpose which had been in- dicated to them in the mission of Moses. II. We too have been the subjects of a great deliver- ance, a deliverance as supernatural in its character and as astonishing in its conditions as ever was the 94 Vv. 14-15. EXODUS XV Vv. 23-24. deliverance of Israel from Egypt. This deliverance is also the product of redemption. We are saved in order that we may rise to the prize of our high calling, and hecome inheritors of our true Land of Promise ; and the first great deliverance is with us also surely an earnest and a pledge of all that is to follow. III. Instead of joyous anticipation, how common a thing it is to meet with gloomy forebodings on the part of the newborn children of God, fresh from the cross of Christ, just rising, as we may say, spiritually out of the waters of the Red Sea. How common a thing it is to meet with young Christians who seem indeed to be on the right side of the Red Sea, but who appear to be more inclined to wring their hands in terror than to ' sound the loud timbrel ' in exultation ! And thus our anticipations of coming disaster take all the bloom off our early joy, and mar our triumph before it has well begun. And thus we pave the way for failure ; for if we begin by doubting the God who has redeemed us, at the very outset of our Christian life, when the great fact of deliverance lies fresh be- fore our view, how can we expect to trust Him better when the actual struggle has begun ? and not to trust Him is to ensure necessary defeat and failure. Now all this dismal apprehension, this cowardly misgiving, comes of our not sufficiently realizing what it is that is contained in redemption. We do not see that our j ustification is not only a fact of the present, but a pledge for the future. We forget that we have passed from nature into grace, and now we have to count upon Divine re- sources. We forget that Christ is the First and the Last ; that as He is the Alpha, so He is also the Omega, and that He is all the alphabet between the Alpha and Omega. — W. Hay M. H. Aitken, The Highway of Holiness, p. 63. ' The people shall hear and be afraid ; sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed ; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them ; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.' — Exodus xv. 14-15. Dr. Chalmers used to quote these verses as an illus- tration of verbal suggestiveness : ' I have often felt, in reading Milton and Thomson, a strong poetical effect in the bare enumeration of different countries, and this strongly enhanced by the statement of some common and prevailing emotion, which passed from one to another.' Reference. — XV. 17. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 63. ' And Miriam the prophetess took a timbrel in her hand ; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.' — Exodus xv. 20. In the seventh letter of Time and Tide Ruskin describes a monotonous, twitching, girl's dance which he once witnessed in the theatre. ' While this was going on, there was a Bible text repeating itself over and over again in my head, whether I would or no,' viz., this verse of Exodus. ' The going forth of the women of Israel after Miriam with timbrels and with dances was, as you doubtless remember, their ex- pression of passionate triumph and thankfulness, after the full accomplishment of their deliverance from the Egyptians. That deliverance had been by the utter death of their enemies, and accompanied by stupendous miracle ; no human creature could, in an hour of triumph, be surrounded by circumstances more solemn. Consider only for yourself what that " seeing of the Egyptians dead upon the seashore " meant to every soul that saw it. And then reflect that these intense emotions of mingled horror, triumph and gratitude were expressed, in the visible presence of the Deity, by music and dancing . . . both music and dancing being, among all ancient nations, an ap- pointed and very principal part of the worship of the gods, and that very theatrical entertainment at which I sate thinking on these things for you — that pantomime, which depended throughout for its suc- cess on our appeal to the vices of the lower London populace, was, in itself, nothing but a corrupt rem- nant of the religious ceremonies which guided the most serious faiths of the Greek mind.' References. — XV. 20. — J. Vickery, Mails of Life, p. 271. J. G. Stevenson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. 1905, p. 38. XV. 22-26. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2301. ' And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter, and the people mur- mured against Moses.' — Exodus xv. 23-24. The enthusiasm with which men of all classes had welcomed William to London at Christmas had greatly abated before the close of February. The new king had, at the very moment at which his fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the coming reaction. That reaction might, indeed, have been predicted by a less sagacious observer of human affairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good ; to long for what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This pro- pensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philo- sophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace and of Pascal, of Voltaire and of Johnson. To its influence on the fate of great communities may be ascribed most of the revolutions and counter revolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations have passed away since the first great national emancipation of which an account has come down to us. We read in the most ancient of books that a people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hard taskmasters, not supplied with straw, yet compelled to furnish the daily tale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery as pierced the heavens. The slaves were wonderfully set free ; at the mo- ment of their liberation they raised a song of grati- tude and triumph ; but in a few hours they began to regret their slavery, and to reproach the leader who had decoyed them away from the savoury fare of the house of bondage to the dreary waste which still 95 Ver. 2. EXODUS XVI Ver. 15. separated them from the land flowing with milk and honey. Since that time the history of every great deliverer has been the history of Moses retold. Down to the present hour rejoicings like those on the shore of the Red Sea have ever been speedily followed by murmurings like those at the Waters of Strife. The most just and salutary revolution must produce much suffering. The most just and salutary revolution cannot produce all the good that had been expected from it by men of uninstructed minds and sanguine tempers. Even the wisest cannot, while it is still re- cent, weigh quite fairly the evils which it has caused against the evils which it has removed. For the evils which it has caused are felt, and the evils which it has removed are felt no longer. Thus it was now in England. The public was, as it always is during the cold fits which follow its hot fits, sullen, hard to please, dissatisfied with itself, dis- satisfied with those who had lately been its favourites. — Macaulay, History of England, chap. xi. Though every man of us may be a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day's march even. — George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, chap. xxx. References. — XV. 23. — T. L. Cuyler, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxvii. 1905, p. 62. XV. 23-25.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 987. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 64. R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p. 46. XV. 25. — J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 185. T. G. Rooke, The Church in the Wilderness, p. 36. F. B. Meyer, The British Weekly Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 561. XV. 26. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1664. XV. 27.— C. Silvester Home, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxvi. 1904, p. 87. G. Dawson, Sermons, p. 19. XVI.— J. McNeill, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 489. XVI. 1-5, 11-36.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2332. ' And the whole congregation of the children of Israel mur- mured against Moses and Aaron.' — Exodus xvi. 2. It is ' worthy of remark,' Milton indignantly observes in his Second Defence, ' that those who are the most unworthy of liberty are wont to behave most un- gratefully towards their deliverers '. Compare the further application of this passage by Milton in his tract on ' The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excel- lence thereof, compared with the Inconveniences and Dangers of Readmitting Kingship in this Nation '. Towards the close of his remonstrance, he writes thus : ' If thepeople besoaffected as to prostitute religion and liberty to the vain and groundless apprehension that nothing but kingship can restore trade . . . and that therefore we must forego and set to sale religion, liberty, honour, safety, all concernments Divine or human, to keep up trading : if, lastly, after all this light among us, the same reason shall pass for current, to put our necks again under kingship, as was made use of by the Jews to return back to Egypt and to the worship of their idol queen, because they falsely imagined that they then lived in more plenty and prosperity ; our condition is not sound, but rotten, both in religion and all civil prudence. . . . Rut I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men ; to some, perhaps, whom God may raise from these stones to become children of reviving liberty ; and may reclaim, though they seem now choosing them a captain back for Egypt, to bethink themselves a little, and consider whence they are rushing ; to exhort this torrent also of the people, not to be so impetuous, but to keep their one channel.' Contrast the character of the Duke of Wellington, as Coleridge in his Table-Talk (4 July, 1830) draws it : ' He seems to be unaccustomed to, and to despise, the inconsistencies, the weaknesses, the bursts of heroism followed by prostration and cowardice, which invariably characterize all popular efforts. He forgets that, after all, it is from such efforts that all the great and noble institutions of the world have come.' ' Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you.' — Exodus xvi. 4. St. John of the Cross notes on this text that the manna was not given to the Israelites until the corn they had brought from Egypt failed. ' This teaches us that we must first renounce all things, for this manna of the angels neither belongs nor is given to the palate which still relishes the food of men.' He quotes the words of Numbers xi. 4, ' Who shall give us flesh to eat ? ' ' They would not content themselves with that so simple manna, but desired and begged for manna of flesh. And our Lord was displeased because they wished to mix so low and coarse a food with one so high and pure : — a manna which, simple as it was, contains within itself the savour of all foods.' — Obras, vol. 1. p. 19. References. — XVI. 4. — J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 287. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2332. XVI. 4-12.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scrip- ture—Exodus, etc., p. 65. XVI. 14, 15.— R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. ii. p. 239. HOLY COMMUNION : THE BREAD OF LIFE ' And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, What is it ? for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, It is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat.' — Exodus xvi. 15. Our subject is the supply given by God to His people for one of their great needs. In the wilderness, where no food could grow or could be obtained, God gave His people bread from heaven to eat. I. The Jews expected the Messiah to give them food from heaven. The manna they expected from their second Redeemer may not have been bodily food ; it was, according to some interpreters, food for the soul. The second Redeemer brought with Him from heaven heavenly food. Rut, alas ! the Jews did not recognize the heavenly food when it came. II. We are travelling through the wilderness of our promised land, and that wilderness provides us with nothing which can supply the wants of our being. God gives us day by day our daily bread, but man cannot live by bread alone. So God gives 96 Ver. 16. EXODUS XVI., XVII Ver. 4. us something more precious, something which can really sustain our life. He gives us that which is no product of earth, the true bread from heaven — the living bread — the only bread which can support us in our journeyings — the only food which can deliver us from death, and that food is the Son of God Whom He sent to be the life of the world. III. And how do we feed upon Him ? We can feed upon Him at any time. We do feed upon Him when our faith goes forth from us and takes hold of Him as the source and stay of our life. But undoubtedly there is a special means provided for us by God that we may feed upon Him, namely, the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. We need faith above all in our Communions. Faith to realize the Presence of the Saviour — faith to feed upon His Body and Blood— faith to assimilate the Divine life which flows to us from Him. Having deep repentance and true faith, we shall necessarily have fervent love, for we shall know and feel the greatness of God's love to us unworthy sinners. Having then all three Christian virtues, we shall nourish our souls to everlasting life by feeding on the manna in Christ's own way. And having the Divine life within us, we shall pass along our desert way, till Jordan being past, we shall no longer need to receive our heavenly gifts through earthly signs. Sacra- ments will cease when we see our Lord face to face, even as the manna ceased when the Israelites entered Canaan. — F. Watson, The Christian Life Here and Hereafter, p. 79. Reference. — XVI. IS. — J. M. Neale, Sermons on the Blessed Sacrament, p. 24. ' Gather ye of it, every man.' — Exodus xvi. i6. The same hand that rained manna upon their tents could have rained it into their mouths or laps. God loves we should take pains for our spiritual food. Little would it have availed them, that the manna lay about their tents, if they had not gone forth and gathered it, beaten it, baked it. Let salvation be never so plentiful, if we bring it not home and make it ours by faith, we are no whit the better. — Bishop Hall. AN OMER FOR EACH MAN How great a virtue is temperance, how much of moment through the whole life of man ! Yet God commits the managing so great a trust, without par- ticular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown man, and therefore when He Himself tabled the Jews from heaven, that omer, which was every man's daily portion of manna, is computed to have been more than might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thrice as many meals. For those actions which enter not into a man, rather than issue out of him, and therefore defile not, God trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser. — Milton, Areopagitiea. References. — XVI. 29. — R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxx. 1906, p. 1. XVI. 35.— C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 229. XVII. 1-7. — K. Moody-Stuart, Light from the Holy Hills, p. 42. ' And Moses said unto them, Why strive ye with me ? Where- fore do ye tempt the Lord?' — Exodus xvii. 2. In the first expostulation condemning them of in- justice— since not he, but the Lord, hath afflicted them ; in the second, of presumption ; that since it was God that tempted them by want, they should tempt Him by murmuring. In the one He would have them see their wrong ; in the other, their danger. — Bishop Hall. You, therefore, who wish to remain free, either in- stantly be wise, or, as soon as possible, cease to be fools ; if you think slavery an intolerable evil, learn obedience to reason and the government of yourselves ; and finally bid adieu to your discussions, your jeal- ousies, your superstitions, your outrages, your rapine, and your lusts. — Milton, Second Defence. ' And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me.' — Exodus xvii. 4. Compare John Foster's remarks to a misanthropist, in the fourth chapter of A Man's Writing Memoirs of Himself: 'Frail and changeable in virtue, you might perhaps have been good under a series of auspicious circumstances ; but the glory had been to be victoriously good against malignant ones. Moses lost none of his generous concern for a people on whom you would have invoked the waters of Noah or the fires of Sodom to return ; and that Greater than Moses, who endured from men such a matchless excess of injustice, while for their sake alone He so- journed and suffered on earth, was not alienated to misanthropy in his life or at His death. ' This people.' — Exodus xvii. 4. The glory of all heroes and patriots grows pale before that of Moses ; others deliver, he creates a nation. With him, 'this people' is, for the first time, recognized as a unity, the chaos of warring tribes is subdued into a cosmos, and the unity of a family expanded into the unity of a possible nation. — Miss Wedgwood, Message of Israel, p. 44. Look almost where you will in the wide field of history, you find religion, whenever it works freely and mightily, either giving birth to and sustaining states, or else raising them up to a second life after their destruction. It is a great state-builder in the hands of Moses and Ulfilas, Gregory and Nicholas. — Sie John Seeley, Natural Religion, pp. 188 f. He did not, like the Egyptians, fashion his works of art out of bricks and granite. He erected human pyramids, he carved out human obelisks, he took a poor shepherd tribe, and from it he created a people fit to defy the centuries, a great, a holy, an eternal people, a people of God ! With greater justice than the Roman poet might this artist, this son of Amram and Jochebed, boast that he had erected a monument which should outlive all the creations of brass. — Heine. 97 Ver. 7. EXODUS XVII., XVIII Ver. 18. THE LESSON OF MASSAH AND MERIBAH ' He called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us, or not?' — Exodus xvii. 7. I. Few incidents during the wanderings in the wilderness made a deeper impression upon the Jews than the striking of the rock by Moses, and the supply of water from it which followed, if, at least, we may judge from the number of references to it in their national literature. But if, on the one hand, the incident thus stood out brightly as a signal manifestation of God's power and love, there was a darker side to it as well, for on the other hand, it was a no less striking and mourn- ful example of the faithlessness and unbelief of God's people, and as such also it made a deep impression. So in that Psalm which the Christian Church has taken for daily use in her morning service there is a reference which the English reader is apt to miss, for when in the Venite the appeal is made, ' To-day if ye will hear His voice,' etc., there is in the original a definite and clear allusion to that which happened ' at Meribah, in the day of Massah ' ; and these names, which were given to the spot in commemora- tion of the incident, stood forth to all time as a memorial of Israel's ingratitude, for Meribah means strife and Massah temptation. It was indeed a tempting of God. After so many manifestations of His power and goodness towards them they were still unable to trust Him for an instant. II. When Israel is said to have 'tempted Jehovah,' it means that they acted as if doubting whether His promise was true, or whether He was really faithful to the character in which He had so often revealed Himself as a present God, able and ready to supply their every need. It indicated on their part a temper of distrust, a readiness to fall into a panic, to doubt God, and so to forsake Him at the first diffi- culty ; and for this it is that it is so often alluded to in the subsequent history as a warning and example to all time. HI. Can we say that we of to-day have no need to lay to heart the warning which is writ so large on the face of the story, and that the temper shown by Israel has no counterpart among us now? The doubt which Israel felt of God's power and presence, because of an unexpected difficulty and a new prob- lem, seems to me typical of that timid, faithless attitude which comes over so many when the advance of knowledge and discovery raises some difficulty with regard to the Christian faith. — Bishop Gibson, Messages from the Old Testament, p. 29. References. — XVII. 8. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. No. 712. XVII. 8, 9.— Ibid. vol. xxxvii. No. 2233. XVII. 8-11.— R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. ii. p. 509. XVII. 9.— Ibid. vol. iii. No. 112. ' Choose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek. ' — Exodus xvii. g. Then only can we pray with hope, when we have done our best. In vain shall Moses be upon the hill, if Joshua be not in the valley. Prayer without means is a mockery of God. — Bishop Hall. ' And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed.' — Exodus xvii. ii. Moses, when the battle was raging, held up his arms to heaven, with the rod of God in his hand ; and thus Israel overcame Amalek. Hence a notion got abroad through the world that in times of difficulty or dan- ger the mightiest weapon a man can make use of is prayer. But Moses' arms grew heavy ; and he was forced to call in Aaron and Hur to hold them up. In like manner do we all too readily weary of prayer, and feel it become a burthen, and let our hands drop ; and then Amalek prevails. . . . As our flesh is so weak, that our prayers soon drop and become faint, unless they are upheld, Christ and the Holy Spirit vouch- safe to uphold our prayers, and to breathe the power of faith into them, so that they may mount heaven- ward, and to bear them up to the very Throne of Grace. — Julius Hare in Guesses at Truth. References. — XVII. 11. — A. F. Winnington Ingram, Under the Dome, p. 75. H.I.M. William II. of Germany, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. 1901, p. 49. 'And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands.' — Exodus xvii. 12. Aaron was brother to Moses : there cannot be a more brotherly office than to help one another in our prayers, and to excite our mutual devotions. No Christian may think it enough to pray alone. He is no true Israelite that will not be ready to lift up the weary hands of God's saints. — Bishop Hall. We do not find that Joshua's hands were heavy in fighting, but Moses' hands were heavy in praying. The more spiritual any service is, the more apt we are to fail and flag in it. — Matthew Henry. References.- — XVII. 12. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 34. XVII. 13. — T. Cham|>- ness, New Coins from Old Gold, p. 66. XVII. 15. — A. Mac- laren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 72. Prof. Findlay, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 285. T. G. Rooke, The Church in the Wilderness, p. 53. XVIII. 3, 4.— A. Mac- laren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 80. XVIII. 7.— D. Strong, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlii. 1892, p. 166. ' In the thing wherein they dealt proudly He was above them.' — Exodus xviii. ii. You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. ' No man ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him,' said Burke. . . . Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. — Emerson on Compensation. ' This thing is too heavy for thee : thou art not able to perform it alone.' — Exodus xviii. 18. ' Manning,' says Mr. Purcell in his Life of the great Cardinal (ii. p. 505), ' never understood early or late the wisdom of co-operation ; never valued the virtue of competition. His idea was the concentration of authority ; one mind to conceive, one hand to exe- cute. This narrowness of mind was his chief intel- lectual defect. It led by degrees to the isolation of his life.' 98 Ver. 21. EXODUS XVIII. -XX Ver. 1. ' Thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness.'— Exodus xviii. 21. Our Bishops in St. George's Company will be consti- tuted in order founded on that appointed by the first Bishop of Israel, namely, that their Primate, or Supreme Watchman, shall appoint under him ' out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers (or, at the least, observers) of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens '. . . . Of course for such work, I must be able to find what Jethro of Midian assumes could be found at once in Israel, these ' men of truth, hating covet- ousness,' and all my friends laugh me to scorn for thinking to find any such. Naturally, in a Christian country, it will be difficult enough ; but I know there are still that kind of people among Midianites, Caffres, Red Indians, and the destitute afflicted, and tor- mented, in dens and caves of the earth, where God has kept them safe from missionaries : — and, as I above said, even out of the rotten mob of money- begotten traitors calling itself a ' people ' in England, I do believe I shall be able to extricate, by slow degrees, some faithful and true persons, hating covet- ousness, and fearing God. And you will please to observe that this hate and fear are flat opposites one to the other ; so that if a man fear or reverence God, he must hate covetous- ness ; and if he fear or reverence covetousness, he must hate God ; and there is no intermediate way whatso- ever.— Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, Letter lxii. 'Able men, such as fear God.' The Italians have an ungracious proverb : Tanto buon che val niente : so good that he is good for nothing. And one of the Doctors of Italy, Nicholas Macchiavel, had the confidence to put in writing, almost in plaine Termes : that the Christian Faith had given up Good Men in prey to those that are tyrannical and unjust. Which he spake because indeed there never was Law or Sect or Opinion did so much magnifie Goodnesse as the Christian religion doth. Therefore to avoid the Scandall and the Danger both, it is good to take knowledge of the Errours of a Habit so excellent. Seeke the good of other men, but be not in bondage to their Faces or Fancies ; for that is but Facilitie or Softnesse ; which taketh our honest Minde Prisoner. — Bacon, Essays {'of Goodnesse'). One has nothing to fear from those who fear God. — Eugenie de Guerin. References. — XVIII. 21. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 88. C. Silvester Home, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xli. 1892, p. 403. XVIII. 24.— M. East- wood, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. 1893, p. 22. ' Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me.' — Exodus xix. 4-5. A great deliverance, whether of a man or of a society, is a great claim on the life that is saved. The Israel- ites carried with them a grand inheritance of holiness and truth. They were saved because of it. As a nation they betrayed it. — Edward Thring. References. — XIX. 5, 6. — Bishop Gibson, The Old Testa- ment in the New, p. 31. XIX. 6. — Bishop Diggle, Sermons for Daily Life, p. 100. ' And the Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow.' — Exodus xix. 10. After the deification of the emperors we are told that it was considered impious so much as to use any coarse expression in the presence of their images. To Marius the whole of life seemed full of sacred presences demanding of him a similar collectedness. — Pater, Marius the Epicurean, i. p. 24. ' The Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai.' — Exodus xix. ii. Lady Beaumont told me that when she was a child, previously to her saying her prayers, she endeavoured to think of a mountain or great river, or something great, in order to raise up her soul and kindle it. — Coleridge, Anima Poetce, p. 56. ' There were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount.' — Exodus xix. 16. Rituals, Liturgies, Credos, Sinai Thunder : I know more or less the history of these ; the rise, progress, decline and fall of these. Can thunder from all the thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centuries of years, make God's laws more godlike to me ? Brother, No. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now ; and do not heed the thunder and the terror any longer ! Perhaps I am above being frightened ; perhaps it is not Fear, but Reverence alone, that shall now lead me. — Carlyle, Past and Present. Reference. — XIX. 20. — K. Moody-Stuart, Light from the Holy Hills, p. 35. ' And God spake all these words.' — Exodus xx. i. ' We have had thirty years of unexampled clerical activity among us,' said Froude to the St. Andrews' students in 1869. ' Churches have been doubled ; theo- logical books, magazines, reviews, newspapers have been passed out by the hundreds of thousands ; while by the side of it there has sprung up an equally astonish- ing development of moral dishonesty. . . . We have false weights, false measures, cheating and shoddy everywhere. Yet the clergy have seen all this grow up in absolute indifference ; and the great question which at this moment is agitating the Church of England is the colour of the ecclesiastical petticoats. Many a hundred sermons have I heard in England, many a dissertation on the mysteries of the faith, on the divine mission of the clergy, on apostolical succession, on bishops, and justification, and the theory of good works, and verbal inspiration, and the efficacy of the sacrament ; but never, during these thirty wonderful years, never one that I can recollect on common honesty, or these primitive command- ments, Thou shalt not lie, and Thou shalt not steal.' 99 Ver. 2. EXODUS XX Ver. 2. The teaching of art is the suggestion — far more con- vincing than assertion — of an ethical science, the germs of which are to the mass of mankind incom- municable ; and the broad daylight of this teaching can be diffused only by those who live in and absorb the direct splendour of an unknown, and, to the generality, an unknowable sun. The mere ignoring of morality, which is what the more respectable of modern artists profess, will not lift them into the region of such teachers ; much less will the denial of morality do so, as some modern artists seem to think. The Decalogue is not art, but it is the guide-post which points direct to where the source of art springs ; and it is now, as in the days when Numa and Moses made their laws : — he is profane who presents to the gods the fruit of an unpruned vine ; that is, sensitive worship before the sensitive soul has been sanctified by habitual confession of and obedience to therational ; and still worse than he who offers the Muses the ' false fire ' of his gross senses, is he who heats the flesh-pots of Egypt with flames from the altar, and renders emotions, which were intended to make the mortal immortal, themselves the means and the subjects of corruption. Of all kinds of corruption, says St. Francis of Sales, the most malodorous is rotten lilies. — Coventry Patmore, Religio Poetce, pp. 88, 89. There is no strange self-deceit more deeply and ob- stinately fixed in men's hearts than this : that those whom God favours may take liberties that others may not ; that religious men may venture more safely to transgress than others ; that good men may allow themselves to do wrong things. There is no more certain fact in the range of human experience than that with strong and earnest religious feeling there may be a feeble and imperfect hold on the moral law, often a very loose sense of justice, truth, purity. . . . All history is full of warnings: of great religious characters spoiled or distorted, of great religious efforts hopelessly marred and degenerate, because in the eagerness and confidence of a good intention the Ten Commandments were left on one side, or kept out of view, or it was taken for granted that of course they were obeyed, because people meant to do God service. — R. W. Church, Discipline of Christian Character, pp. 41, 48. References.— XX. 1. — T. F. Lockyer, The Inspirations of the Christian Life, p. 19. F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 37. H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxix. 1906, p. 264. XX. 1, 2.— G. S. Barrett, Christian World Pul- pit, vol. lxi. 1902, p. 214. XX. 1-11.— A. Maclaren, Exposi- tions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 97. XX. 1-17. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No. 2928. ' I am the Lord thy God.' — Exodus xx. 2. ' I have many times essayed,' said Luther in his Table- Talk, ' thoroughly to investigate the Ten Command- ments ; but at the very outset, " I am the Lord thy God," I stuck fast ; that very one word, I, put me to a non-plus. He that has but one word of God before him, and out of that word cannot make a sermon, can never be a preacher.' FROM EGYPT TO CANAAN ' I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.' — Exodus xx. 2. Life is a journey, on which we did not start for our- selves to travel to God ; but He started us. He brought us out of the dark night of nothingness, and made us living creatures ; He gave us man's powers of thinking and working and loving. It was not, we may be sure, for nothing. This is true of the life of each one of us ; it is true of that larger life of which we are each one little part, the life of mankind on earth. What God begins, He means to carry on, and to bring to a good end. And so the very root truth of religion is this : God is, and there is a purpose in life. I. Redemption has been wrought for us ; and we walk in the light of it. Egypt and the Red Sea lie behind. Consider what this means. What is the bondage under which the world groans ? (1) There is the bondage of sin : the evil which holds us, and we cannot do right. But Jesus Christ broke that bondage once for all by being entirely and perfectly good ; by making a good human life a living reality, and not merely a dream ; so that now even our im- perfect goodnesses, joining on to Him, have got a sure promise of victory. (2) There is the bondage of guilt. But Jesus Christ broke that bondage too, He ' made peace through the blood of His Cross '. (3) There is once more the bondage of pain and grief and death : but Christ suffered every pain of that iron slavery ; He died the death of the slave, and through death, like a new Red Sea, passed to victory. II. How true it is that the Christian Church is the body which bears the stamp of that deliverance. You see it in her faith ; in her sure and certain hope ; in her patience and her joy. She knows whence she started : the start has made her sure of the finish. III. And that is what in the Church each of us must learn. The true Christian is a man upon whose life, mind, and character a great deliverance from God has set its stamp. The power of it was given to each of us in our baptism. That is our beginning ; from it we are to go, sure that God is with us, sure that He will be with us to bring us through ; sure that He Who brought us out of Egypt has strength to bring us to Canaan, and means to do it ; sure that He will perform the cause which we have in hand. This is what gives its strength and firmness to the Christian character, and lights it with hope and joy and peace which are not of the world. But this also is what makes us penitent. What will stir us really to repent is not to be told that if we do perhaps God will redeem us, but to know of a surety that He has redeemed us ; that we have been forgetfully, ungrate- fully, rebelliously sinning against our redemption ; but that the Redeemer, with His long-suffering patience, waits for us to turn to Him, and when we do so, will accomplish for us His Redemption. — Bishop Talbot, Sermons Preached in the Leeds Parish Church, 1889-95, p. 117. 100 Ver. 3. EXODUS XX Vv; 5, 6J. Reference. — XX. 2, 3. — Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. 1900, p. 155. ' Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.'— Exodus xx. 3. ' What is the whole Psalter,' said Luther, ' but merely thought and exercises on the First Command- ment ? ' 'It is evident to my reason that the existence of God,' says Coleridge in his Omeriana, ' is absolutely and necessarily insusceptible of a scientific demon- stration, and that Scripture has so represented it. For it commands us to believe in one God. / am the Lord thy God : thou shalt have none other gods but Me. Now all commandment necessarily relates to the will ; whereas all scientific demonstration is independent of the will.' All self-sacrifice, made solely for the love of man, or for the gratification of some merely human ambition, is not a righteous but a sinful thing — and, as sin, will assuredly find its punishment. This furnishes, appar- ently, a solution to the great mystery, why so many noble self-sacrifices are so futile, so aimless, so posi- tively injurious. ' I am the Lord thy God ; thou shalt have none other gods but Me.' If we make to ourselves idols of any sort — that is, if we allow love to conquer right, and set aside what we ought to do in favour of what we like to do, we suffer accordingly — and God Himself, who is justice as well as mercy, cannot save us from suffering. — Mrs. Ceaik, Sermons Out of Church, pp. 39-40. References. — XX. 3. — ' Plain Sermons ' by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. ix. p. 240. F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 105 ; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 129. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The School of Christ, p. 73. W. C. E. Newbolt, Church Times, vol. xxix. 1891, p. 1059. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. 1900, p. 61. G. S. Barrett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. 1902, p. 264. ' Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.' — Exodus xx. 4. ' In regard to idolatry,' says Melanchthon to Calvin in Landor's Imaginary Conversations, ' I see more criminals who are guilty of it than you do. I go beyond the stone quarry and the pasture, beyond the graven image and the ox-stall. If we bow before the distant image of God, while there exists within our reach one solitary object of substantial sorrow, which sorrow our efforts can remove, we are guilty (I pro- nounce it) of idolatry ; we prefer the intangible effigy to the living form. Surely we neglect the service of our Maker if we neglect His children.' ' Thou shalt not.' — Exodus xx. 4. There is a whole life reluctant as well as a life consenting. The involuntary words, the thoughts we would not think, the things we would not do, and those that we do not love, are among the strongest influences of our lives. — Miss Thackeray in Old Kensington. References.— XX. 4.— F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, pp. 123, 321 ; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 145. XX. 4, 5.— J. Hamilton, Faith in God, p. 61. XX. 4, 5, 6.— Bishop Gore, Church Times, vol. xliii. 1900, p. 315 ; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. 1900, p. 161. G. S. Barrett, ibid. vol. lxi. 1902, p. 358. AN INHERITANCE OF BLESSING ' I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me ; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My com- mandments.'— Exodus xx. 5, 6. I. Visiting the Sins of the Fathers upon the Children. — The Jews spoke of that visitation as a Divine punishment for a particular sin. Here we have a law of nature, a law which is continually ful- filling itself in that district of nature which we call human society. The moral struggle of each man that is born into the world is made harder for him by each failure to resist sin on the part of those who went before him. When we hear men speak of the law of heredity, it is this that they generally have in their minds, the transmitted tendency to evil. II. Visiting the Sins of the Fathers upon the Children. — Is that all ? Nay ; for He shows mercy unto thousands of them that love Him and keep His commandments. The inheritance of evil is not the sole inheritance which we receive from our forefathers. The scathing satire which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Antony : — The evil that men do lives after them ; The good is oft interred with their bones, was certainly not intended to teach that the influence of evil is more potent than the influence of good. There is no law of life which tells that evil tendencies are handed down from father to son which does not tell us more plainly that good tendencies are. That, indeed, is the very law by which the world grows. The survival of the fittest — what does it mean but that good is more enduring than evil ? That evil propagates itself is true ; but in each succeeding generation its influence becomes less and less baneful. The curse is to the third and fourth generation. Good, on the other hand, increases in power and in fertility as it is handed on from one to another in the march of the race. III. The true inheritance of the Christian soul is the grace of Jesus Christ, Incarnate, tempted, suffer- ing, but victorious over sin as over death. Here again is a heritage which comes to you through no conscious act of your own. Just as surely as the disciplined lives of your fathers make it easier for you to lead disciplined lives, far more surely than the sins of your fathers beset you in your conflict with sin is the grace of Christ yours for battle, for endurance, for achieve- ment. Here at least is an inheritance with no taint of evil, which may be used for yourselves and for those who shall come after you in untold blessing. Ye see your calling. And the Voice which calls you is the Voice of Jesus Christ Himself, in whose Body ye are 101 Ver. 7 EXODUS XX Ver. 12. very members incorporate. — J. H. Bernard, Via Domini, p. 92. References. — XX. 5. — G. Tyrrell, Oil and Wine, p. 230. C. Kingsley, Sermons on National Subjects, pp. 144, 153. XX. 5, 6.— A. H. Moncure Sime, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. 1897, p. 74. W. G. Elmslie, Expository Lectures and Ser- mons, p. 150. ' Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.' — Exodus xx. 7. ' Many persons,' says Julius Hare in Guesses at Truth, 'are so afraid of breaking the third commandment that they never speak of God at all ; and to make assurance doubly sure, never think of Him. Others seem to interpret it by the law of contraries : for they never take God's name except in vain.' THE SACRED BANNER ' Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain ; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.' — Exodus xx. 7. The Hebrew word translated ' take ' has sometimes been connected by commentators with the solemn phrase which refers to Jehovah's name as the banner or standard under which we advance to work or to fight. It was under that standard that Moses and Joshua secured the first victory of the Lord's people in the earliest beginning of their national life and recorded it in the name of Jehovah Nissi — the Lord my banner. I. New Tests of Loyalty. — ' Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.' The tempta- tion comes in two different ways. Have we a right to claim the title and privileges of Christian be- lievers in the Lord God if we are ceasing firmly and courageously and openly to defend His banner — the banner under which we were enlisted in Baptism — from those who do it wrong? If we think that nothing in the realm of belief matters very much, it is not likely that we shall be particularly brave or outspoken in its defence. To claim as a Christian, the ' holy sanction ' of our Redeemer's Name means, or ought to mean, a quite deliberate admission of the demands, sometimes the exacting demands, to which membership in His society makes us liable. The Church has been put in trust with a sacred deposit of essential truth which God has in Jesus Christ revealed to man, and no respect for other people's opinions, much less any mere good-natured and almost careless kindliness, will justify us in tampering with that deposit or belittling its unique authority. II. The Spirit of Persecution. — We must be not less sternly on our guard against too ready an appro- priation of that sacred banner and its sanctions, on behalf of every honest opinion which we may any of us form in matters of Christian faith or Christian usage. There is more than one way in which genu- inely religious people can take the Name of the Lord their God in vain. III. Conscience and the Law. — The danger is, I suppose, greatest when we reach the border, or cross the border of what is commonly called the realm of conscience. Is it possible that the old-fashioned reverence for law and order shown forth in things Divine and human, in Nature and in national life, has somewhat waned amongst us, and not least amongst earnestly religious men ? IV. ' Verities ' and ' Opinions '. — There are great things and small, great issues and small, in our re- ligious life. There are mighty and unchallengeable verities, the things which cannot be shaken, and there are pious and reasonable opinions, and devout and wholesome usages which stand upon a humbler level, and are neither unchallengeable nor unchal- lenged. Do not confuse the two kinds of verities, or mistake the one for the other. — Archbishop Davidson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxii. 1907, p. 218. References. — XX. 7. — Bishop Gore, Church Times, vol. xlii. 1899, p. 174. F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 143 ; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 321. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. 1900, p. 301. G. S. Barrett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxii. 1902, p. 27. ' Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.'— Exodus xx. 8. What is meant by to ' keep holy ' ? Nothing but to devote ourselves to holy words, works, and life. For the day requires no special hallowing : it is holy in itself; but God wills that it be holy to thee. — Luther. There was a time when it delighted me to flash my satire on the English Sunday ; I could see nothing but antiquated foolishness and modern hypocrisy in this weekly pause from labour and from bustle. Now I prize it as an inestimable boon, and dread every encroachment upon its restful stillness. . . . The idea is surely as good a one as ever came to heavy-laden mortals ; let one whole day in every week be removed from the common life of the world, lifted above common pleasures as above common cares. With all the abuses of fanaticism, this thought remained rich in blessings ; . . if its ancient use perish from among us, so much the worse for our country. — George Gissing, Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, pp. 86-87. References. — XX. 8. — J. Percival, Some Helps for School Life, p. 186. C. Holland, Gleanings from a Ministry of Fifty Years, p. 233. F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 163; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 337. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (2nd Series), p. 337. XX. 8, 9. — E. Fowle, Plain Preaching to Poor People (3rd Series), p. 25. XX. 8, 11. — Lyman Abbott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 412. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 13. G. S. Barrett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxii. 1902, p. 84. XX. 9.— W. J. Hocking, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xli. 1892, p. 284. J. H. Shakespeare, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 248. XX. 10.— A. Murray, The Children for Christ, p. 100. ' Honour thy father and thy mother.'— Exodus xx. 12. In the first of his lectures on Alexandria and Her Schools Kingsley applies this commandment to the true relation of one generation to another. ' On reverence for the authority of bygone generations, 102 Ver. 13. EXODUS XX Ver. 16. depends the permanence of every form of thought or belief, as much as of all social, national, and family life : but on reverence of the spirit, not of the letter ; of the methods of our ancestors, not of their con- clusions.' And this is maternity — to give the best years and best love to ensure the fate of being despised. — Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native. 'I don't know who would be a mother,' says Mrs. Transome to her son in Felix Holt (chap, u.), ' if she could foresee what a slight thing she will be to her son when she is old.' And in her essay on Riehl, George Eliot observes how ' among rustic moral tales and parables ' of the German peasantry, ' not one is more universal than the story of the ungrateful children, who made their grey-headed father, depen- dent on them for a maintenance, eat at a wooden trough, because he shook the food out of his trembling hands. Then these same ungrateful children observed one day that their own little boy was making a tiny wooden trough ; and when they asked him what it was for, he answered — that his father and mother might eat out of it, when he was a man and had to keep them.' Of all forms of self-elevation, the one which, even when it amounts to absolute self-sacrifice, we cannot but regard with very tender and lenient eyes, is the devotion of the young to the old, of children to parents. No doubt, there is a boundary beyond which even this ought not to be permitted ; but the remedy lies on the elder side. There are such things as unworthy, selfish, exacting parents, to whom duty must be done, simply for the sake of parenthood, without regarding their personality. ' Honour thy father and thy mother' is the absolute command, bounded by no proviso as to whether the parents are good or bad. Of course no one can literally ' honour ' that which is bad — still one can respect the abstract bond, in having patience with the individual. But I think every high or honourable instinct in human nature will feel that there is hardly a limit to be set to the devotion of a child to a good parent — righteous devotion, repaying to a failing life all that its own young life once received, of care and comfort and blessing. — Mus. Craik, Sermons Out of Church, pp. 37-38. References. — XX. 12. — F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 187 ; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 353. A. Murray, The Children for Christ, p. 108. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 93. G. S. Barrett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxii. 1902, p. 139. XX. 12-21. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 107. 'Thou shalt not kill.' — Exodus xx. 13. Catholics still revere the memory of Carlo Borromeo, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, who gave his blessing to Campion and Parson, on their way to stir up re- bellion in England, as well as in Ireland, and to assassinate Elizabeth if opportunity should serve. God said, ' Thou shalt do no murder '. The Pope, however, thought that God had spoken too broadly, and that some qualification was required. The sixth commandment could not have been intended for the protection of heretics ; and the Jesuits, if they did not inspire, at least believed him. — Herbert Paul, Life of Froude, p. 140. References. — XX. 13. — F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 209 ; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xli. 1892, p. 1. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 150. 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.'— Exodus xx. 14. The Bible is God's great Police Court, as well as His Temple, and till life ceases to be coarse, lessons on coarseness will be needed. — Edward Thring. Those who penetrate below the surface of society cannot bring themselves to speak lightly of these sins. They are destructive alike to the family and to the State. For the State is based on justice, and voluptuousness is a cruel injustice, for it engages in a combat which is both unequal and cowardly ; the aggressor risks comparatively nothing, and the victim risks all. — Vinet. References.— XX. 14.— F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 233. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 294. ' Thou shalt not steal.'— Exodus xx. 15. Under ' stealing, generically taken,' says Carlyle, ' you may include the whole art of scoundrelism ; for what is lying itself but a theft of my belief?' So far as a nation is to be considered a natural being, ' thou shalt not steal ' is as much a natural law as ' thou shalt not breathe without oxygen '. National life is as impossible without honesty as natural life without oxygen. — Miss Wedgwood, Message of Israel, p. 280. What is there in the world worth lying, or robbing, or ferociously striving for ? If one could cheat death by cheating one's neighbour, there might be some sense in it. If one could steal genius or knowledge — could filch away ' this man's art and that man's scope ' — in that, too, there would be some show of reason. But nothing worth having is capable of being stolen, either by force or fraud. What can be stolen, or otherwise basely acquired, is the means of enjoying the pleasures of ostentation, sensuality, or sport — the very things which a religion of the intellect would most decisively discount. — Let Youth But Know, p. 198. References.— XX. 15.— S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. Hi. 1897, p. 99. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 326. G. S. Barrett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. Ixii. 1902, p. 416. F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 257. 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.'— Exodus xx. 16. Dr. Johnson, once arguing with Gairick and Gifford on the lack of accent and emphasis in actors' read- ing, declared, ' Well now, I'll give you something to speak, with which you are little acquainted, and then 103 Ver. 19. EXODUS XX., XXI Ver. 1. we shall see how just my observation is. That shall be the criterion. Let me hear you repeat the ninth commandment, " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour".' 'Both tried at it,' says Boswell, reporting a friend's account of the incident, 'and both mistook the emphasis, which should be upon not and false witness. Johnson put them right, and enjoyed his victory with great glee.' References. — XX. 16. — F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 281. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. 1901, p. 13. G. S. Barrett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiii. 1903, p. 35. XX. 17.— F. W. Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 302 ; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xli. 1892, p. 177. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. 1901, p. 116. G. S. Barrett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiii. 1903, p. 123. XX. 18-20.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2097. ' And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear : but let not God speak with us, lest we die. ' — Exodus xx. ig. As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, ' Let not God speak to us lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.' Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of his brother's or his brothers' brother's God. — Emehson on Self- Reliance. Let nothing come between you and the light. Re- spect men as brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants. — Thoreau. The Children of Israel in times past said unto Moses, ' Speak thou unto us, and we will hear : let not the Lord God speak to us, lest we die '. Not so, Lord, not so do I beseech Thee. Let not Moses nor any of the prophets speak to me, but rather Thou Thyself, who inspirest and enlightenest all prophets. For Thou, apart from them, canst instruct me perfectly, whereas without Thee they can avail nothing. Let not Moses therefore speak unto me, but Thou, O Lord my God, the Truth Eternal, lest I die and prove unfruitful, being only warmed outwardly and not kindled inwardly. — The Imitatio Christi (vol. rv. chap. ii.). References. — XX. 21. — ' Sermons ' by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. ii. p. 89. XX. 23.— H. Scott Hol- land, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxix. 1906, p. 280. XX. 24. (R.V.) — F. S. Webster, In Remembrance of Me, p. 11. 1 Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.' — Exodus, xxi. i. The Maker's Laws, whether they are promulgated in Sinai thunder, to the ear or imagination, or quite otherwise promulgated, are the Laws of God ; trans- cendent, everlasting, demanding obedience from all men. The Universe is made by Law ; the great Soul of the World is just and not unjust. Look then, if thou have eyes or soul left, into this Shoreless Incom- prehensible ; into the heart of its tumultuous Ap- pearances, Embroilments and mad Time- Vortexes, is there not, silent, eternal, an All-just, an All-beautiful ; sole Reality and ultimate controlling power of the Whole ? This is not a figure of speech ; this is a fact. — Cablyle, Past and Present. The Egyptians were the first people upon the earth who emerged into what is now called civilization. How they lived, how they were governed during the tens of hundreds of generations which intervened between their earliest and latest monuments, there is little evidence to say. At the date when they become distinctly visible they present the usual features of effete Oriental societies ; the labour executed by slave gangs, and a rich luxurious minority spending their time in feasting and revelry. Wealth accumu- lated, Art nourished. Enormous engineering works illustrated the talent or ministered to the vanity of the priestly and military classes. The favoured of fortune basked in perpetual sunshine. The millions sweated in the heat under the lash of the task-master and were paid with just so much of the leeks and onions and flesh-pots as would continue them in a condition to work. Of these despised wretches some hundreds of thousands were enabled by Providence to shake off the yoke, to escape over the Red Sea into the Arabian desert, and there receive a code of laws under which they were to be governed in the land where they were to be planted. What were these laws ? A revelation of the true God was bestowed on them, from which, as from a fountain, a deeper knowledge of the Divine Nature was to flow out over the earth ; and the central thought of it was the realization of the Divine government — not in a vague hereafter, but in the living present. The unpractical prospective justice which had become an excuse for tyranny was superseded by an immediate justice in time. They were to reap the harvest of their deeds, not in heaven, but on earth. There was no life in the grave whither they were going. The future state was withdrawn from their sight till the mischief which it had wrought was forgotten. It was not denied, but it was veiled in a cloud. It was left to private opinion to hope or to fear ; but it was no longer held out either as an excitement to piety or a terror to evildoers. The God of Israel was a living God, and His power was displayed visibly and immedi- ately in rewarding the good and punishing the wicked while they remained in the flesh. It would be unbecoming to press the parallel, but phenomena are showing themselves which indicate that an analogous suspension of belief provoked by the same causes may possibly be awaiting ourselves. It may be that we require once more to have the living certainties of the Divine government brought home to us more palpably ; that a doctrine which has been the consolation of the heavy-laden for eighteen hundred years may have generated once more a practical infidelity ; and that by natural and intelli- gent agencies, in the furtherance of the everlasting 104 Ver. 2. EXODUS XXIII Ver. 19 Eurposes of our Father in heaven, the belief in a life eyond the grave may again be about to be with- drawn.— Feoude, Short Studies, vol. n. References. — XXI. 5, 6. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1174. XXII. 21, 22.— H. Adler, The Orphan and the Helpless, Sermons, 1855-84. XXII. 29.— R. B. Brindley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. p. 41. ' Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.' — Exodus xxiii. 2. At certain seasons the only way of being right in the future consists in knowing how to resign ourselves to being unfashionable in the present. — Renan. Universal suffrage assembled at hustings — I will consult it about the quality of New Orleans pork, or the coarser kinds of Irish butter ; but as to the character of men, I will if possible ask it no question : or if the question be asked and the answer given, I will generally consider, in cases of any importance, that the said answer is likely to be wrong, — that I have to listen to the said answer and receive it as authentic, and for my own share to go, and with whatever strength may lie in me, do the reverse of the same. Even so, your Lordship ; for how should I follow a multitude to do evil ? There are such things as multitudes full of beer and nonsense, even of insincere factitious nonsense, who by hypothesis cannot but be wrong. — Carlyle, Latter-day Pamph- lets (ii.). Human authority at the strongest is but weak, but the multitude is the weakest part of human authority. — John Hales. Reference. — XXIII. 2. — J. Cole Coghlan, Penny Pulpit, vol. xiv. No. 828, p. 293. ' Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause.' — Exodus xxiii. 6. It is a lamentable fact that pure and uncorrupt justice has never existed in Spain, as far at least as record will allow us to judge ; not that the principles of justice have been less understood there than in other countries, but because the entire system of justiciary administration has ever been shamelessly Erofligate and vile. Spanish justice has invariably een a mockery, a thing to be bought and sold, terrible only to the feeble and innocent, and an instrument of cruelty and avarice. — Bokrow's The Gypsies of Spain (chap. xi. pt. i.). ' The gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.' — Exodus xxiii. 8. And that he would for no respect digress from justice well appeared by a plain example of another of his sons-in-law, Mr. Heran. For when he, having a matter before him in the Chancery, presuming too much of his favour, would by him in no wise be per- suaded to agree to any indifferent order, then made he in conclusion a flat decree against him. . . . And one Mr. Gresham likewise having a cause depending in the Chancery against him, sent him for a new year's gift a fair cup, the fashion whereof he very well liking caused one of his own to be brought out of his chamber, which he willed the messenger to deliver in recompense, and under other conditions would he in no wise receive it. Many things more of like effect for the declaration of his innocence and clearness from corruption, or evil affection, could I here rehearse besides. — Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More. Compare the discussion on bribery in Macaulay's Essay on Bacon. ' Thou shalt not oppress a stranger ; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.' — Exodus xxiii. g. It was God's argument to the Israelites, to be kind to strangers, because themselves had been strangers in the land of Egypt. So should you pity them that are strangers to Christ, and to the hopes and comforts of the saints, because you were once strangers to them yourselves. — Baxter, Saints' Rest, chap. rx. ' The seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still ; that the poor of thy people may eat.' — Exodus xxiii. ii. God throws the poor upon our charge — in mercy to us. Couldn't He take care of them without us if He wished ? are they not His ? It's easy for the poor to feel, when they are helped by us, that the rich are a godsend to them ; but they don't see, and many of their helpers don't see, that the poor are a godsend to the rich. They're set over against each other to keep pity and mercy and charity in the human heart. If every one were entirely able to take care of him- self we'd turn to stone. . . . God Almighty will never let us find a way to quite abolish poverty. Riches don't always bless the man they come to, but they bless the world. And so with poverty; and it's no contemptible commission to be appointed by God to bear that blessing to mankind which keeps its brother- hood universal. — G. W. Cable, Dr. Sevier, p. 447. References. — XXIII. 12. — J. H. Shakespeare, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 248. XXIII. 14, 15.— A. M. Fairbairn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiii. 1903, p. 316. XXIII. 15-17.— G. Monks, Pastor in Ecclesia, p. 135. XXIII. 16. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 115. XXIII. 18-20.— Bishop Simpson's Sermons, p. 347. ' Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.' — Exodus xxiii. 19. 1 In less than two minutes,' says Scott, describing at the close of Kenilworth the murder of Amy Robsart, ' Foster heard the tramp of a horse in the court- yard, and then a whistle similar to that which was the Earl's usual signal ; — the instant after, the door of the Countess's chamber opened, and in the same moment the trap-door gave way. There was a rush- ing sound — a heavy fall — a faint groan — and all was over. ..." So pass our troubles," said Varney, enter- ing the room ; " I dreamed not I could have mimicked the Earl's call so well." "Oh, if there be judgment in Heaven, thou hast deserved it," said Foster, " and wilt meet it ! Thou hast destroyed her by means of her best affections. It is a seething of the kid in the mother's milk ! " ' 105 Ver. 29. EXODUS XXII I., XXIV Ver. 11. Compare Newman's resentful application of this verse to the behaviour of the Anglican Bishops towards himself in 1843. 'I resigned my living on Sep- tember the 18th. I had not the means of doing it legally at Oxford. The late Mr. Goldsmid was kind enough to aid me in resigning it in London. I found no fault with the Liberals ; they had beaten me in a fair field. As to the act of the Bishops, I thought, to borrow a Scriptural image from Walter Scott, that they had " seethed the kid in his mother's milk".' Reference.— XXIII. 20, 21.— J. B. Brown, The Divine Life in Man, p. 235. ' I will not drive them out all at once.' — Exodus xxiii. 29. I had never an extraordinary enlargement, either of joy, strength, or sanctification, but the waters dried up. There are no sudden steps in grace ; ' I will not drive them out all at once '. — Fraser of Brea, Memoirs (chap. 1.). References. — XXIII. 30. — C. Jerdan, Pastures of Tender Grass, p. 299. XXIV. 1-12.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 118. ' And Moses alone shall come near the Lord.'— Exodus xxiv. 2. All deep feelings of a chronic class agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and are fed by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how naturally do these ally themselves with religious feeling ! — and all three, love, grief, religion, are haunters of solitary places. — De Quincey. ' All the words which the Lord hath said will we do.' — Exodus xxiv. 3. Under baleful Atheisms, Mammonisms, Joe-Manton Dilettantisms, with their appropriate Cants and Idolisms, and whatsoever scandalous rubbish obscures and all but extinguishes the soul of man — religion now is ; its Laws, written if not on stone tables, yet on the azure of Infinitude, in the inner heart of God's Creation, certain as Life, certain as Death ! I say the Laws are there, and thou shalt not disobey them. It were better for thee not. Better a hundred deaths than yes. Terrible ' penalties ' withal, if thou still need ' penalties,' are there for disobeying. — Carlyle in Past and Present. Reference. — XXIV. 3. — E. Talbot, Sermons Preached in the Leeds Parish Church, 1889-95, p. 126. THE VISION OF GOD AND THE FEAST BEFORE HIM ' They saw God, and did eat and drink.' — Exodus xxiv. ii. I. Consider the vision of God possible for us. The Bible says two things about that. It asserts, and it denies with equal emphasis, the possibility of our seeing Him. That vision which is impossible is the literal vision by sense, or, in a secondary meaning, the full, adequate, direct knowledge of God. The vision which is affirmed is the knowledge of Him, clear, certain, vivid, and, as I believe, yielding nothing to sense in any of these respects. What lessons does this vision bring for us ? That we Christians may, even here and now, see God, the God of the covenant. Christ, the revealer of God, makes God visible to us. The degree of this vision depends upon ourselves, and is a matter of cultivation. There are three things wanted for sight — something to see ; something to see by ; something to see with. God has given us the two first, and He will help us to the last if we like. Christ stands before us, at once the Master- Light of all our seeing, and the Object. Faith, meditation, purity, these three are the purging of our vision, and the conditions in us of the sight of God. II. Notice the feast in the Divine presence. ' They did eat and drink.' That suggests, in the singular juxtaposition of the two things, that the vision of God is consistent with, and consecrates; common enjoyment and everyday life. If we see God there is only one thing that we shall be ashamed to do in His presence, and that is to sin. That strange meal on the mountain was no doubt made on the sacrifices that had preceded, of which a part were peace-offerings. The same meaning lies in this meal on the mountain that lay in the sacrificial feast of the peace-offering, the same meaning that lies in the great feast of the New Covenant, ' This is My Body ; this is My Blood '. The vision of God and the feast on the mountain are equally provided and made possible by Christ our Passover, who was sacrificed for us. III. We may gather out of this incident a glimpse of a prophetic character, and see in it the perfecting of the vision and of the feast. Whatever may be the change in manner of know- ledge, and in measure of apprehension, and in proxim- ity of presence, there is no change in heaven in the medium of revelation. Christ is forever the Mani- fester of God, and the glorified saints see God as we see Him in the face of Jesus Christ, though they see that face as we do not. The feast means perfect satisfaction, perfect repose, perfect gladness, perfect companionship. — A. Mac- laren, The Unchanging Christ, p. 125. VISION AND DRUDGERY ' Also they saw God, and did eat and drink.'— Exodus xxiv. ii. It has been said by a very competent scholar, that this is the most significant chapter in the whole of the Old Testament. It is the basis of that covenant between God and man, which is glorified in the New Covenant of Christ. There was first the shedding of the blood of oxen, and ' This cup is the New Covenant in My Blood '. There was the pouring of half the blood upon the altar, in token of lives that were for- feited to God. And then there was the sprinkling of the people with the other half, as if God were saying, ' My children, live again '. For the blood is the life, and God, in covenant-mercy, was redeeming them from the death which they deserved. It was then that Moses and the seventy elders went up- 106 Ver. 11. EXODUS XXIV Ver. 11. wards to the rocky heights of Sinai. And above a heaven, blue as a sapphire stone, somehow the vision of the Eternal broke on them. And they saw God, not with the eye of sense, for no man hath seen God at any time— and they saw God and did eat and drink. Is not that a strange conclusion to the matter? It is a magnificent and unequalled anti- climax. They saw God and began to sing His praise ? Not so ; they saw God and did eat and drink. What does it mean? I. First, the vision of God is the glory of the commonplace. It was an old and a widespread belief that the vision of God was the harbinger of death. You are all familiar with Old Testament passages where men have voiced this primitive conviction. We are far away from that conception now, thanks to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our God is love ; He has a Father's heart ; He has a Father's yearning for the prodigal. But God was terrible and dreadful once ; and to see Him was not a blessing but a woe, driving a man apart from all his fellows into a loneliness horrible as death. I have no doubt that these seventy men of Israel had some such heavy feeling in their hearts. Let them see God, and then farewell for ever to the common lights and shadows of human- ity. And so they climbed the hill, and had their vision above the pavement of the sapphire stones, and they saw God, and did eat and drink. Do you see what they were learning in that hour ? They were learning that the vision of God does not with- draw us. It is not vouchsafed to drive a man apart, and rob him for ever of familiar joys. It is vouch- safed to consecrate the commonplace ; to shed a glory on the familiar table ; to send a man back into his daily round with the light that never was on sea or land. II. The vision of God is the secret of tranquillity. That day at Sinai, as you may well conceive, had been a day of most intense excitement. It was a day when the most deadened heart was wakened to awe and to expectancy. If that were so with the body of the people, it was doubly so with these seventy elders. Think what it must have signified to them as they clambered up the rocky steeps of Sinai. There God had dwelt: there He had spoken to Moses : there there was blackness and darkness and tempest, and so terrible was the sight that even Moses said, 'I exceedingly fear and quake'. I do not think that these seventy elders were in any state to think of food or drink. Like a soldier in the ex- citement of the charge, they forgot that they were hungry or athirst. And then they had their" vision of the infinite, and it brought them to their quiet selves again, and the tumult and confusion passed away, and they saw God, and did eat and drink. That means that in the vision of God there is a certain tranquillizing power. Just to realize that He is here, is one of the deep secrets of repose. The man who has learned that can eat and drink and join in the happiness of feast and fellowship, although his table be set upon Mount Sinai, and be ringed about with darkness and with fire. — G. H. Morbison, The Return of the Angels, p. 235. THE VISION OF GOD 'They saw God, and did eat and drink.' — Exodus xxiv. ii. Bishop Chadwick remarks on this passage : ' They saw the God of Israel,' and under His feet the blue- ness of the sky like intense sapphire. And they were secure : they beheld God, and ate and drank. I. But in privilege itself there are degrees : Moses was called up still higher, and left Aaron and Hur to govern the people while he communed with his God. For six days the nation saw the flanks of the moun- tain swathed in cloud, and its summit crowned with the glory of Jehovah like devouring fire. Then Moses entered the cloud, and during forty days they knew not what had become of him. Was it time lost? Say rather that all time is wasted except what is spent in communion, direct or indirect, with the Eternal. The narrative is at once simple and sublime. We are sometimes told that other religions besides our own rely for sanction upon their supernatural origin. ' Zarathustra, Sakya-Mooni, and Mahomed pass among their followers for envoys of the Godhead ; and in the estimation of the Brahmin the Vedas and the laws of Manou are holy, Divine books ' (Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i. p. (>). This is true. But there is a wide differ- ence between nations which assert that God privately appeared to their teachers, and a nation which asserts that God appeared to the public. It is not upon the word of Moses that Israel is said to have believed ; and even those who reject the narrative are not en- titled to confound it with narratives utterly dissimilar. There is not to be found anywhere a parallel for this majestic story. II. But what are we to think of the assertion that God was seen to stand upon a burning mountain ? He it is Whom no man hath seen or can see, and in His presence the seraphim veil their faces. It will not suffice to answer that Moses 'endured as seeing Him that is invisible,' for the paraphrase is many centuries later, and hostile critics will rule it out of court as an after-thought. At least, however, it proves that the problem was faced long ago, and tells us what solution satisfied the early Church. With this clue before us, we ask what notion did the narrative really convey to its ancient readers? If our defence is to be thoroughly satisfactory, it must show an escape from heretical and carnal notions of deity, not only for ourselves, but also for careful readers from the very first. Now it is certain that no such reader could for one moment think of a manifestation thorough, exhaustive, such as the eye receives of colour and of form. Be- cause the effect produced is not satisfaction, but desire. Each new vision deepens the sense of the unseen. Thus we read first that Moses and Aaron, Nadab and 107 Ver. 12. EXODUS XXIV Ver. 18. Abihu and the seventy elders, saw God, from which revelation the people felt and knew themselves to be excluded. And yet the multitude also had a vision according to its power to see ; and indeed it was more satisfying to them than was the most profound insight enjoyed by Moses. To see God is to sail to the horizon ; when you arrive, the horizon is as far in front as ever ; but you have gained a new conscious- ness of infinitude. ' The appearance of the glory of the Lord was seen like devouring fire in the eyes of the children of Israel.' But Moses was aware of a glory far greater and more spiritual than any material splendour. When theophanies had done their utmost, his longing was still unslaked, and he cried out, ' Show me, I pray thee, Thy glory '. To his consciousness that glory was still veiled, which the multitude sufficiently beheld in the flaming mountain. And the answer which he received ought to put the question at rest for ever, since, along with the promise ' All My goodness shall pass before thee,' came the asser- tion ' Thou shalt not see My face, for no man shall see Me and live '. III. So, then, it is not our modern theology, but this noble book of Exodus itself, which tells us that Moses did not and could not adequately see God, however great and sacred the vision which he beheld. From this book we learn that, side by side with the most intimate communion and the clearest possible unveiling of God, grew up the profound consciousness that only some attributes and not the essence of deity had been displayed. Reference. — XXIV. 11. — J. Kerr Campbell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xli. 1892, p. 119. ' Come up to Me into the mount, and be there ; and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments, which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.' — Exodus XXIV. 12. ' The monastical life,' says Bacon in the second part of The Advancement of Learning, ' is not simple, contemplative, but performeth the duty either of incessant prayers and supplications, which hath been truly esteemed as an office in the Church, or else of writing or taking instructions for writing concerning the law of God, as Moses did when he abode so long in the mount. . . . But for contemplation which should be finished in itself, without casting beams upon society, assuredly divinity knoweth it not.' My life is not stolen from me. I give it. A pleasure which is for myself alone touches me slightly. It is for myself and for my friends that I read, that I reflect, that I write, that I meditate, that I hear, that I observe, that I feel. I have consecrated to them the use of all my senses. — Diderot. ' And Moses went up into the mount.' — Exodus xxiv. 15. ' There was an idea of sanctity,' says Buskin, in the third volume of Modern Painters, ' attached to rocky wilderness, because it had always been among hills that the Deity had manifested Himself most inti- mately to men, and to the hills that His saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for especial communion with Him, and to prepare for death. Men acquainted with the history of Moses, alone at Horeb, or with Israel at Sinai . . . were not likely to look with irreverent or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded their golden horizon, or drew down upon them the mysterious clouds out of the height of the darker heaven.' How insignificant Sinai appears when Moses stands on its summit ! This mountain seems but a pedestal whereon rest the feet of the man, whilst his head reaches to the clouds, where he speaks with God. — Heine. ' And Moses went into the midst of the cloud.' — Exodus xxiv. 18. If we insist upon perfect intelligibility and complete declaration in every moral subject, we shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and power of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and live in the cloud ; content to see it opening here and 'closing there ; rejoicing to catch, through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of stable and substantial things ; but yet perceiving a noble- ness even in the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness wearied. — Buskin, Frondes Agrestes, p. 24. The region of dimness is not wholly without relations towards our moral state. — F. W. Newman. FORTY DAYS ' Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.' — Exodus xxiv. 18. Moses was forty days and forty nights in the mount. He was away. The mount means high elevation, an altitude crowned with golden clouds, utmost distance, perspective, and all the music of mystery. Some- times we can only say of the great man, legislator, poet, or prophet, He is not here. Where is he? Away. Where ? No man can tell ; in the hidden places, in the invisible sanctuaries ; away among the shaping clouds that are sometimes almost living presences. It is only when we are at some distance from our own life that we can make anything really of it ; you cannot deeply consider that problem in the throng, you cannot use your slate and pencil in the great city multitude ; you must go away into a mountain or valley or hang over the sanctuary-sea ; in order to see yourself you must stand some distance back from yourself. I. Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights. What was he receiving ? He was receiving the law. Our greatest men are not the men on the streets. We call these men on the streets very active persons, much too active ; the law is not a street anecdote or an incident of the thoroughfare, the law is away in the sanctuary of the infinite, the invisible, and the ineffable. II. Moses was away forty days and forty nights receiving, not inventing, the law. There is a 108 Ver. 18. EXODUS XXIV., XXV Vv. 18-20. wondrous deliberation about the movement of God. The few commandments which we once called the law could be written in less than a minute each ; it was not the handwriting but the heart-writing that required the time. III. In Matthew iv. 2 we read that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, ' And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungered '. Moses and the Lamb ; the similarities between their histories are worth tracing out ; such collocation of coincidence and repetition constitutes itself into an argument. Forty days and forty nights Jesus was fasting : surely great preparation means great issues ; surely this is an athlete in train- ing for some fight ; this cannot be a mere pedantic arrangement ; we must wait and see what comes of this trial of the soul : it may be that fasting is the true feasting, it may be that this disciplining the body and all that gathering up of force which we call passion or desire may mean that the greatest contest ever fought on the theatre of time is about to take place. IV. What is the meaning of all this withdrawal, of all this forty days and forty nights' experience ? 1. The meaning is rest. The prophets must go away for a time, they must become nothing, enter into a state of negativeness, forget for the time being their own office and function ; to forget it may be best to remember it. But the withdrawal must not be too long ; too much rest would mean weariness ; there is a rest that leads to reluctance, disbelief, and despair. A measurable rest, and then a happy re- newal of service, that is the Lord's idea of the ministry of His own discipleship. 2. The meaning is self-culture. A man may be too busy keeping other vineyards to keep his own, a man may be so much from his own fireside that his own children shall be turned into atheists by a misconstruction of his false piety. We should not indulge in any culture that separates us from the people. 3. The meaning is reception. There must be a time of intaking, there must be periods when we are not giving out, but when we are receiving in. Understand therefore that withdrawment from the prophetic office and service, as in the case of Moses and Elijah, does not mean abandonment of that office, but further preparation for it, and that the best withdrawment is a withdrawment which takes us right into the very sanctuary of the soul of Jesus Christ. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. i. p. 132. ' Purple and scarlet' — Exodus xxv. 4. We know it to have been by Divine command that the Israelites, rescued from servitude, veiled the taber- nacle with its rain of purple and scarlet, while the under sunshine flashed through the fall of the colour from its tenons of gold. — Ruskin, Stones of Venice, (vol. 11.). References. — -XXV. 8. — W. Allen Whitworth, The Sanc- tuary of God, p. 1. T. Champness, New Coins from Old Gold, p. 32. XXV. 9.— T. M. Morris, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiv. 1903, p. 228. XXV. 10-22.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2838. XXV. 15.— S. Baring-Gould, Sermon Sketches, p. 19. XXV. 18. — T. Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. 1897, p. 268. THE MERCY-SEAT Exodus xxv. 18-20. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the mercy-seat was a mere lid, an ordinary portion of the ark itself. It was made of a different and more costly material, of pure gold, with which the ark was only overlaid. There is separate mention that Bezaleel ' made the ark, . . . and he made the mercy- seat,' and the special presence of God in the Most Holy Place is connected much more intimately with the mercy-seat than with the remainder of the struc- ture. Thus He promises to 'appear in the cloud above the mercy-seat '. And when it is written that ' Moses heard the Voice speaking unto him from above the mercy-seat which is upon the ark of the testimony,' it would have been more natural to say directly ' from above the ark ' unless some stress were to be laid upon the interposing slab of gold. In reality no distinction could be sharper than between the ark and its cover, from whence to hear the Voice of God. And so thoroughly did all the symbolism of the Most Holy Place gather around this supreme object, that in one place it is actually called ' the house of the mercy- seat '. Let us, then, put ourselves into the place of an ancient worshipper. Excluded though he is from the Holy Place, and conscious that even the priests are shut out from the inner shrine, yet the high priest who enters is his brother ; he goes on his behalf ; the barrier is a curtain, not a wall. But while the Israelite mused upon what was be- yond, the ark, as we have seen, suggests the depth of his obligation ; for there is the rod of his deliverance and the bread from heaven which fed him ; and there also are the commandments which he ought to have kept. And his conscience tells him of ingratitude and a broken covenant ; by the law is the knowledge of sin. It is therefore a sinister and menacing thought that immediately above the ark of the violated cove- nant burns the visible manifestation of God, his injured Benefactor. And hence arises the golden value of that which interposes, beneath which the accusing law is buried, by means of which God 'hides His face from our sins '. The worshipper knows this cover to be provided by a separate ordinance of God, after the ark and its contents had been arranged for, and finds in it a vivid concrete representation of the idea ' Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back'. That this was its true intention becomes more evident when we ascer- tain exactly the meaning of the term which we have not too precisely rendered ' mercy-seat '. 109 Ver. 22. EXODUS XXV., XXVIII Ver. 21. THE FIRST TOKEN OF DIVINE FELLOWSHIP ' I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat.' — Exodus xxv. 22. I. Is it not rather a strange place for communion between God and man. Communion always implies some affinity of nature between two or more minds. One would think the mercy seat the last place for affinity of man with God. It is a meeting of ex- tremes— the Holy One and the conscious sinner, the Righteous Judge and the suppliant for pardon, the Sitter on the Great White Throne and the convicted miscreant at the bar of justice. II. We could have understood communion with the Divine in other quarters. We could have felt it under the throbbing stars, where our hearts vibrate with the sense of the infinite. We could have realized it in the presence of genius where our spirit is made to forget its own limits. We could have learned it even from our moments of spiritual thirst, for the thirst for God implies a capacity for God. But that there should be communion in the moment of our moral conviction, that there should be Divine fellow- ship in the hour when we recognize that we are clothed in rags — this is a startling thing ! And yet it is true. For, what is it that convicts a man ? What is it that makes a human soul a suppliant for mercy ? It is holiness already begun. The white throne of God is only visible to the eye that is emerging from impure waters. I am never so near to God as when I cry, ' Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord ! ' Not even when vibrating 'neath the stare am I so near as then. The stars reveal something beyond me ; the conviction of sin reveals something in me. III. George Macdonald has somewhere said that there are colours which are only brought to light by a cloudy day. I think it is pre-eminently true in the sphere of the mercy seat. I never learn that I have a little good in me till I have realized my worthlessness. It is not increased poverty but increased means that makes me a suppliant. It is the light, not the dark- ness, that brings me to my knees. The shadow that I see is the shadow of my God. I mistake the shadow for nightfall ; I sit down to weep. I imagine that I am sitting on the cold ground ; and all the time I am on the doorstep of my Father's house, and the door is open, and my Father is coming out to take me in. It is the brightness of God's face that makes me cry for mercy. — G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 113. References. — XXV. 22. — J. W. Atkinson, The Penny Pulpit, vol. xiv. No. 841, p. 405. XXV. 30.— A Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 126. XXV. 31. — Ibid. p. 134. ' And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount.' — Exodus xxv. 40. He is not altogether silent about religion. But he has the power of suspending absolutely his belief and the natural effect it would have on a thoughtful mind busy with man's nature and fortunes ; he lodges it apart, and above him, in dignity and honour, but where it has no more influence on the temptation, the troubles, the issues of the real world than the gods of the epicurean heaven. . . . He looked on it as a sort of art or mystery, with rules and grounds inde- pendent of and unconnected with the ordinary works and thought of life. — R. W. Church on Montaigne, Miscellaneous Essays, pp. 80-81. In different ages, a different pattern is shown to the prophets on the mount ; always what is fairer and more august than can be seen in the restless plain of life below. . . . The Soul of Christ, the sinless, risen, and immortal, is the pattern shown to us ; shown first upon the field of history, and on the paths of this living world, and then taken to the heavens, to look down thence on the uplifted eye of faith and love throughout successive generations. — Martineau. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. — Thoreau, Walden. References. — XXVII. 3-8. — Newton H. Marshall, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxix. 1906, p. 187. XXVIII. 12, 29.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 144. 1 And thou shalt make the breastplate of judgment with cun- ning work . . . and thou shaft set in it settings of stones.' — Exodus xxviii. 15, 17. Aaron had to wear upon his breast before the Lord twelve precious stones, not of one sort, but each one reflecting the light differently from his neighbour. There was one nearly black, whatever the diamond thought of him. But all the stones being set equally upon the priest's breast, no one of them might quarrel with another, saying, ' You are quite wrong, you are ; you ought to reflect the light as I do. You will never be admitted into the most holy place.' Even the dark jasper reflected its measure of light as freely as brilliant diamond. The former may have a meek- ness the latter has not. Indeed, it is a known fact that the diamond is harder than any other stone. And hardness is distance from life in proportion to the hardness. One thing is clear, there is a tribe in Israel corre- sponding with each stone. And the Lord requested that He might see the twelve stones upon Aaron's breast, with the names of the Twelve Tribes engraven on them, as often as he appeared before Him to minister in the priest's office (Exod. xxviii. 29). Perhaps it was in virtue of his representing, im- partially, every tribe of God's people, that he obtained Divine responses pertaining to every tribe. A man cannot be the medium of truth to all the tribes of God, unless all truth has a place in him. Learn, whether the priests and ministers of God ought not to comprehend in their souls and characters con- siderable breadth and variety. — Dr. Pulsford, Quiet Hours. ' And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve.' — Exodus xxviii. 21. As the High Priest of old, when he entered into the Holy of Holies, bore upon his breast those twelve jewels which witnessed to the Twelve Tribes of Israel, so now, with a converse fitness and an equal duty, a religious and just people, advancing towards the gates 110 Ver. 29. EXODUS XXVII I. -XXX Ver. 12. of its new and higher destinies, must bear upon its breast that cause which is the cause of God. — Aubrey de Verb. 'When he goeth in unto the holy place.'— Exodus xxvih. 29. If the veil has as yet been but little withdrawn from the Holy of Holies, those who come after us will have learnt at least this one lesson, that this lifting of the veil which was supposed to be the privilege of priests, is no longer considered as a sacrilege, if attempted by any honest seekers after truth. — Max Muller. References.— XXVIH. 29. — S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 132. ' Thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim ; and they shall be upon Aaron's heart, when he goeth in before the Lord.'— Exodus xxviii. 30. ' May I ask you,' said John Bright to the citizens of Birmingham in 1858, ' to believe, as I do most de- voutly believe, that the moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once ; it may not come in our life-time ; but, rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says : — The sword of Heaven is not in haste to smite. Nor yet doth linger. We have experience, we have beacons, we have land- marks enough. . . . We are not left without a guide. It is true we have not, as an ancient people had, Urim and Thummim — those oraculous gems on Aaron's breast — from which to take counsel, but we have the unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law to guide us, and only so far as we walk by that guidance can we be permanently a great nation, or our people a happy people.' References. — XXVIII. 36. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 151. R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. 1896, p. 232. XXVIII. 36-38.— Spur- geon, Sermons, vol. xxxvi. No. 2153. BACTERIA IN THE CHALICE ' Aaron shall bear the iniquity of the holy things, which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts.'— Exodus xxviii. 38 (R.V.). Science tells us that bacteria lurk in the white snow and sparkling dew ; and the purest saints are con- scious of secret frailty marring holiest things and hours. Infection, alloy, degeneration, play their part in the spiritual as well as the natural sphere. I. In private devotional hours it is not difficult to shut the door of our chamber, but it is far from easy to close the door of the mind upon base and secular images and feelings. Our prayers are hindered by insincerity, uncharitableness, impatience, and unbe- lief; we regard iniquity in our heart, and therefore many petitions we offer can never be put into the golden censer. II. Outside sanctuaries, Sabbaths, and Scriptures are institutions, days, and relations whose sacredness we must not forget. The loves of the home, kinship, friendship, citizenship, the treasures of literature, the gifts of beauty, the stewardship of wealth, the flowers and lutes of pleasure — these are holy also. But if these things are great and noble, Divine symbols and instruments of infinite suggestion and purport, how often are we forgetful and perverse, awakening in our better moments to reproach ourselves with the sin of sacrilege ! III. We must not think lightly of these sins be- cause they seem in their refinement to stand apart from and beyond ordinary morality. They are not ecclesiastical but real sins, and with all their apparent subtilization they injuriously affect the whole sphere of character and action equally with coarser faults. In coining, the addition to gold of one five-hundredth part by weight of bismuth produces an alloy which crumbles under the die and refuses to take an im- pression ; the very scent of an incongruous element sometimes debases and destroys the whole vast mass into which it enters. And if in physics the influence of minute admixtures is so immense, we may be sure that the iniquity of our holy things is not less per- vasive and disastrous, affecting all that we are and do, and vitiating what otherwise would be the pure gold of life and action. — W. L. Watkinson, Themes for Hours of Meditation, p. 66. References. — XXIX. 1. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1203. XXIX. 26-28.— J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope, p. 241. XXIX. 33.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2528. XXIX. 43. — A. Rowland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. 1893, p. 74. ' And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and be their God.' — Exodus xxix. 45. So long as there is in man's heart one fibre to vibrate at the sound of what is just and true and honourable, so long as the instinctively pure soul prefers purity to life, so long as friends of truth are to be found who are ready to sacrifice their peace in the cause of science, friends of righteousness ready to devote them- selves to holy and useful works of mercy, womanly hearts to love whatsoever is good, beautiful, and pure, and artists to express it by sound and colour and words of inspiration — so long God will dwell within us. — Ren an on Spinoza. References. — XXX. 1. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 159. XXX. 1-4.— W. Garrett Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. 1897, p. 330. XXX. 7, 8. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1710. XXX. 11, 12, 15. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 361. XXX. 11-16. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1581. J. Hammond, What Shall I Give for My Life 'I A Sermon for the Census. THE CENSUS AND ITS RELIGIOUS ASPECT ' When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel.' — Exodus xxx. 12. I. This first census of which we have any recorded his- tory took place more than three thousand years ago. It was taken in the wilderness, and in a very differ- ent way from that in which our census is taken. Ill Ver. 15. EXODUS XXX. -XXXII Ver. 2. From the grouped tribes every man of twenty years of age and upwards was called out, and after- wards passed over to the crowd of the ' numbered '. No women or children were numbered. Women and children owe even more than men to the influence of Jesus Christ. Then each man had to pay a half- shekel, about thirteenpence-halfpenny, at the express command of God, to be devoted to religious purposes. The census was the solemn recognition of the separate individuality, the responsible manhood of every full- grown Israelite. II. The payment of the half-shekel was an acknow- ledgment of his obligation to sue for the mercy of Heaven and to do the will of God. When you fill up your census-paper remember that you are a sinful being before you are anything else. Do you not realize the necessity of paying the half-shekel, of ransoming your soul ? The census expresses the solidarity of our interests. All humanity is one great organism, one colossal man, as Pascal says, of whom Christ is the Head. No one can say that he is so insignificant that it does not matter whether he goes to the devil or not. Nobody will be left out because of his poverty or crime. — Hugh Peice Hughes, The Sermon Year Booh, 1891, p. 362. Reference. — XXX. 12. — A.? Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 168. ' The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls.' — Exodus xxx. 15- The tribute to be paid for the ransom of the soul was half a shekel, about fifteenpence of our money. The rich were not to give more nor the poor less ; to intimate that the souls of the rich and poor were alike precious. — Matthew Henry. Reference. — XXX. 15. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 170. ' And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works.' — Exodus xxxi. 3-4. The ambition of art, to come ever nearer to a per- fect work, is an evidence that the spirit of the Master- Artist stirs and quickens the human spirit. 'See, I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works.' In the spirit of God every art is latent. . . . Faith and art have all the sympathy of mother and child. Neither of them is content with nature's conditions. Faith discerns a higher world, and art would fain body it forth. — Dr. John Pulsford, The Supremacy of Man, pp. 97 f. Compare Adam Bede's words to his brother, in the opening chapter of Adam Bede : ' There's such a thing as being over-speritial ; we must have some- thing beside Gospel i' this world. Look at the canals, an' th' aqueducs, an' th' coal-pit engines, and Arkwright's mills there at Cranford ; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things, I reckon. But t' hear some o' them preachers, you'd think as a man must be doing nothing all's life but shutting's eyes and looking what's a-going on inside him. I know a man must have the love o' God in his soul, and the Bible's God's word. But what does the Bible say ? Why, it says as God put His sperrit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my way o' lookin' at it : there's the sperrit o' God in all things and all times — week-day as well as Sunday — and i' the great works and inventions, and i' the figuring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our headpieces and our hands as well as with our souls.' Reference. — XXXI. 3-4. — G. Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, p. 8. ' Verily My sabbaths ye shall keep.' — Exodus xxxi. 13. If we measure things not as they were divinely in- tended, nor as they are in themselves, but as they are subjectively entertained, it might be a question whether the Scottish Sabbath was not for 200 years a greater Christian Sacrament, a larger, more vital, and more influential fact in the Christianity of the country than the annual or sometimes semi-annual celebration of the Lord's Supper, or the initiatory rite of Baptism, or both together. . . . We are born, on each Lord's day morning, into a new climate, a new atmosphere ; and in that new atmosphere (so to speak), by the law of a renovated nature, the lungs and heart of the Christian life should spontaneously and continu- ously drink in the vital air. — W. E. Gladstone, Later Gleanings, pp. 342 f. Where every day is not the Lord's, the Sunday is His least of all. — George Macdonai.d, Donal Grant, chap. VII. There is a deep Christian instinct in England, an in- stinct which has come down to us through many gene- rations, and for the last 350 years at any rate, founded in a large measure on Puritan belief, fed by what may be called the ' two Puritan Sacraments ' — the Bible and Sunday. — Father Dolling in The Pilot (10 Nov., 1900). References.— XXXII. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2398. XXXII. l.—W. C. E. Newbolt, Church Times, vol. xxxii. 1894, p. 244. W. C. Magee, Outlines of Sermons on the Old Testament, p. 28. XXXII. 1-8, 30-35.— A. Maclaren, Ex- positions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 171. XXXII. 1-29. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. liii. No. 2884. ' And Aaron said to them, Break off the golden ear-rings which are in the ears of your wives.' — Exodus xxxii. 2. Who would not have been ashamed to hear this ans- wer from the brother of Moses, ' Pluck off" your ear- rings ' ? He should have said, ' Pluck this idolatrous thought out of your hearts '. — Bishop Hall. 112 Ver. 3. EXODUS XXXII Ver. 6. ' And all the people brake off the golden ear-rings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.'— Exodus xxxii. 3. Unless reason be employed in ascertaining what doctrines are revealed, humility cannot be exercised in acquiescing in them ; and there is surely at least as much presumption in measuring everything by our own fancies, feelings, and prejudices, as by our own reasonings. Such voluntary humiliation is a prostra- tion, not of ourselves before God, but of one part of ourselves before another part, and resembles the idolatry of the Israelites in the wilderness : ' The people stripped themselves of their golden orna- ments, and cast them into the fire, and there came out this calf. — Archbishop Whately, Annotations to Bacon's Essays (i.). 1 These be thy gods, O Israel.'— Exodus xxxii. 4. It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can ; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprison- ments, were it but for moments, as true admiration. Thus it has been said, ' All men, especially all women, are born worshippers ' ; and will worship, if it be but possible. Possible to worship a Something, even a small one ; not so possible a mere loud-blaring Nothing ! What sight is more pathetic than that of poor multitudes of persons met to gaze at Kings' Progresses, Lord Mayors' Shows, and other gilt- gingerbread phenomena of the worshipful sort, in these times ; each so eager to worship ; each, with a dim fatal sense of disappointment, finding that he cannot rightly here ! These be thy gods, O Israel ? and thou art so willing to worship — -poor Israel. — Carlyle in Past and Present. ' And Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow is a feast unto the Lord.' — Exodus xxxii. 5. Writing in 1657 to Lord Craighall, Samuel Ruther- ford warns him seriously against kneeling before the consecrated elements. ' Neither will your intention help, which is not of the essence of worship ; for then, Aaron in saying, "To-morrow shall be a feast for Jehovah," that is, for the golden calf, should not have been guilty of idolatry ; for he intended only to decline the lash of the people's fury, not to honour the calf. Your intention to honour Christ is nothing, seeing that religious kneeling, by God's institution, doth necessarily impart religious and Divine adoration.' RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS ' And the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.' — Exodus xxxii. 6. t I. We must have 'play'. Even the children of Israel must. We have great examples in this matter. Our Incarnate Lord and His Apostles had their feasts as well as their fasts ; their quiet hours as well as their hours crowded with holy toil. Such ' play ' is greatly needed in our over- worked days. Physical labour requires mental amusement, and mental labour demands physical recreation. The words ' amusement ' and ' recreation ' are in themselves full of suggestiveness. The idea of the word 'amusement' is 'to draw the mind to' some- thing lighter. ' Recreation ' obviously signifies a fresh creation. Everything, however, depends upon the quality and the quantity of our recreations and amusements. II. Let me enumerate some good amusements and recreations. Some ' play ' that is to be held honour- able to all. Earliest in such a category I would place pure light literature. Music, at home and in public, is one of the most exalted and delightful of recreations. Art offers splendid and tranquil amusement and recreation. What delights modern science opens to the multi- tude ! Nature teems with instructive delights. I hardly need to remind young men or young women in these times of the athletic pleasures which abound. A good walk in the city streets will, if we practise an educated observation, be a manifold benefit to us. Charles Kingsley said that a walk along Regent Street was an intellectual tonic. A walk in the country, especially with the ministry of pleasant and profitable conversation, may be a memorable and every way beneficial experience. The pleasures of travel are happily now by the co- operative plan within reach of large numbers of young people. Church life affords the best recreation to some. Ever remember the noble words of Dean Church, ' Every real part of our life ought to be part of our Christian life '. III. Suffer me to warn you against certain evil amusements and recreations. Shun that class of entertainments which vulgarizes and sullies mind and soul. It is not wholly superfluous to caution you against exhausting amusements. Whatever impairs your vital energy and lowers your physical tone is a foe to your highest well-being. Nor is it fatuous to enter a caution against such amusements and recreations as disincline you for more serious pursuits. Few, if any, amusements work such injury as do betting and gambling. The ' play ' in which Israel occupied itself and to which my text refers was arrantly unworthy. May this ancient lapse save us from similar lapse. Take heed lest evil ' play ' discredit and ruin you. • — Christ is the ultimate source of true pleasures. He causes these to abound to the believing soul. — Dinsdale T. Young, Messages for Home and Life, p. 47. Illustration. — You have heard the story of the young hunter at Ephesus : returning from the chase with his unstrung bow in his hand he entered the house of the venerable St. John. To his utter astonish- ment John was playing with a tame dove. He indi- cated his surprise that the seer should be so frivolously occupied. St. John asked him why he carried his bow unstrung. ' In order that my bow may retain its elasticity,' was his immediate reply. ' Just so,' said 113 8 Ver. 18. EXODUS XXXII Ver. 35. St. John ; ' and mind and body will not retain their elasticity or usefulness unless they are at times un- strung ; prolonged tension destroys their power.' — Dinsdale T. Young, Messages for Home and Life, p. 47. References. — XXXII. 7-1-4. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2486. XXXII. 10, 31, 32.— T. G. Selby, The God of the Patriarchs, p. 185. XXXII. 14. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2398. XXXII. 15-26.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 177. EPIPHANY ' And Moses said, I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory. And God said, I will make all My goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee.' — Exodus xxxii. i8. I. The pleading supplication, ' I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory,' is the language of the human heart, under the pressure of the deepest desire man can ex- perience. It is the voicing of the ceaseless, age-long yearning on the part of man for tangible, ocular de- monstration of God. And the answer given to Moses is an authoritative declaration of the only demonstra- tion of the existence and character of God possible to beings in the finite condition of earth's education. The only proof of the existence of any primal force is that force in action ; the absolute is only known as it is conditioned. God to us, only is as He acts ; and so the answer to the universal appeal of human- ity is, ' I will make all My goodness pass before thee '. II. The unwillingness on the part of man to accept this answer of God as final has been the cause of most of the defective apprehension, narrowness, supersti- tion, and second-hand religion which have clipped the wings of Godward growth. He who follows God's clue is he whose eyes are slowly opened. God makes all His goodness to pass before him. He has dis- covered and acknowledged physical beauty in the universe, and moral beauty in man ; he infers logic- ally that there must be a Divine ideal of both physical and moral beauty, of which he has recognized the shadow, and he knows that that Divine ideal must be God. Moses, the servant of the Lord, affords a striking example, from the ancient world, of a standard thus slowly raised, till his one absorbing need was to see God. He had followed the clue. Symbolisms and limitations had no power to satisfy the instincts of his heart, and his whole soul goes out in the cry, ' I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory '. A picture-lesson of the same process is afforded by our Lord's dealings with His disciples. Slowly He unfolds their aspira- tions, as the sun unfolds a flower. At last, one of them, as the spokesman of the rest, bursts out with the cry, ' Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us '. And in each case the answer is the same : to Moses it is, ' I will make all My goodness pass before thee ' ; to Philip it is, ' Have I been so long time with you, and hast thou not known Me, Philip ? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' III. Now, is not this the meaning of the Festival of the Epiphany? The story of that star leading thoughtful Zoroastrians across the wilderness to Bethlehem, is the analogy of the secret drawing of the Infinite Mother-Heart, leading watchful souls through the deserts of materialism, idolatry, imper- fect Theism, to the oasis of the Incarnation, the highest philosophical demonstration of the character of God. Two conditions appear to be suggested by to-day's Epiphany teaching as pre-requisite for the right apprehension of this full restful revelation of God : the one is aspiration, the other is activity. God is often not known because He is not wanted. At the threshold of every spiritual function there is a want, a restlessness, a desire, a hunger, that the largest promises of the world cannot fill. Prayer, thought, aspiration, will quicken and vitalize that blessed restlessness. The second condition is activity, usefulness, minis- try. A life of selfish vanity, a life of idle indulgence, a life of mean self-concentration, may have a good deal of religion in it, but it cannot see God. — B. Wilberforce, Following on to Know the Lord, p. 57. Illustration. — O, my God, let me see Thee; and if to see Thee is to die, let me die, that I may see Thee. — Prayer of St. Augustine, p. 58. References. — XXXII. 24. — J. H. Halsey, The Spirit of Truth, p. 261. XXXII. 26.— H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, God's Heroes, p. 197. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 303. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi. No. 1531 ; see also vol. 1. No. 2884. XXXII. 31, 32.— E. L. Hull, Sermons Preached at King's Lynn (3rd Series), p. 106. ' Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin ; — and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written.' — Exodus xxxii. 32. ' Not by reading, but by some bitterly painful experi- ence,' said Maurice (Life, i. p. 171), 'I seem to have been taught that to aim at any good to myself while I contemplate myself apart from the whole body of Christ, is a kind of contradiction. Let my name be blotted out, and my memory perish, if only France may be free. — Danton. ' And the Lord plagued the people because they made the calf. ' — Exodus xxxii. 35. Afflictions speak convincingly, and will be heard when preachers cannot. If our dear Lord did not put these thorns under our head, we should sleep out our lives and lose our glory. — Baxter, Saints' Rest, chap. x. References. — XXXIII. — W. Gray Elmslie, Expository Lectures and Sermons, p. 295. XXXIII. 7. — Spurgeon, Ser- mons, vol. vii. No. 359. XXXIII.— R. J. Campbell, City Temple Sermons, p. 27. C. Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxix. 1906, p. 273. XXXIII. 12-14.— H. Varley, Spiritual Light and Life, p. 97. XXXIII. 12-23.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 186. 114 Vv. 13-15. EXODUS XXXIII Ver. 14. THE PRESENCE SHALL ENLIGHTEN THE WAV {For the New Year) 'Shew me now Thy way. . . . And He said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. And he said unto Him, If Thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.' — Exodus xxxiii. 13-15. Wk have here : — I. An unenlightened prayer for light. A rash prayer, impatient, unwise, and of the kind which God never answers according to our pleasure. Show me now Thy way. He wanted to have the sealed book opened, unrolled and set before him — that book in which God has written things to come. The Lord is too merciful to let us look ahead. It is in mercy that He overthrows our predictions and mocks our guesses. It is nearly always the unex- pected that appears. We know not anything about to-morrow — we can only hope and trust : and it is better so. The uncertainties of life keep us sober, watchful, reverently humble and prayerful. They help to make us patient, brave, dutiful and religious. It would not help us to know the way that God is going to take with us. II. The rash and inconsiderate prayer is answered in God's larger wisdom. Show me what is coming, said Moses. And the voice replies, Only this much will I show thee. My presence shall go with you, and I will give thee rest. God strips the request of all that is presumptuous and unwise, and answers what remains. He denies the wish that would work mischief, and grants the sure blessing. It is a mercy that most of our prayers are dealt with in this manner. Faith and foolishness go hand in hand in most of our approaches to God. We should miss most of the best and high- est things of life if God were to say yes to all our requests, and we should imbibe a great deal of poison in the course of life if He allowed us to drink every cup that we asked for. If the presence go with us, all will be well. In the desert there will be water » springs, and in all barren and rugged places the green pastures of His love. III. Now see how faith at once recognizes that this is the surest and best blessing, and eagerly asks that it may be given. Yes, cries Moses at the finish, that is what I need, just that and not the other thing — Thy presence. If Thy presence go not with me, cany us not up hence. This will be the confession of every religious man and woman at the beginning of the year. We dare not trust ourselves ; we cannot depend upon any of life's uncertainties. If the past has taught us any- thing it is this : That we were weak when we thought ourselves strong, often most foolish when we deemed ourselves specially wise, most erring where we claimed infallibility, most disappointed where our calcula- tions were most confident, and that we only acted wisely and well when we took hold of God's hand and in trustful prayer let Him lead us. — J. G. Green- hough, Christian Festivals and Anniversaries, p. 10. ' My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.' — Exodus xxxiii. 14. Many are quite conscious that the person has never yet appeared who can unlock for them and lead their way into the depths and hiding-places of their nature. Others are quite conscious that the presence of cer- tain individuals gives them a totally new and different possession of their being. ... If the presence of a gifted creature be so mysteriously helpful, what help must there be for us in the Divine Presence ? — Dr. Pulsford, Quiet Hours, pp. 222 f. I WILL GIVE THEE REST Compare Nietzsche's analysis in The Twilight of the Idols of spurious ' peace of soul '. It may be the be- ginning of fatigue, the first shadow which the evening — every sort of evening — casts. Or a sign that the air is moist, that southern winds arise. Or uncon- scious gratitude for a good digestion or the quieting dawn of the convalescent to whom all things have a new taste and who is waiting in expectancy. Or the condition which follows upon a full gratification of our ruling passion, the agreeable feeling of a rare satiety. Or the senile weakness of our will, of our desires, of our vices. Or laziness, persuaded by con- ceit to deck itself out in moral guise. GOD'S PRESENCE AND GOD'S REST {Third Sunday after the Epiphany) ' And He said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.' — Exodus xxxiii. 14. I. God's Presence. — Notice the promise of the text, 'My presence shall go with thee'. Whatever the world may say, however men may scoff, there is some- thing real in the presence of God. {a) God's presence gives us safety. — Whatever our work may be, in whatever land it may lie, how- ever risky it may seem to men, if we have God's presence with us we are truly safe. (b) God's presence gives us also perfect strength. — It was in the realization of that presence that David went forth to meet Goliath. If God is with you, you will have strength to be holy. (c) God' 8 presence gives strength to live as God would have us live. (d) God's presence gives us the song. — You re- member the Psalmist's words, ' In Thy presence is fullness of joy ; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore'. When the Lord Jesus Christ had ascended to heaven the disciples ' returned to Jerusa- lem with their joy.' II. God's Rest. — The rest God gave to Moses was not a rest of idleness without service, but a rest in service, and if you have God's presence with you, you will find rest even in your busiest moments. You will find that you must be up and doing, that you cannot, you dare not, be idle, as, for every hour, you must give account to God ; but in the midst of service, service which is tiring and oftentimes dispiriting, you will find that the presence of God will give you perfect rest. 115 Ver. 14. EXODUS XXXIII Ver. 19. III. The Condition of God's Presence. — God will not come and take possession of an unholy temple. The heavenly Dove will never dwell in a foul nest. If you want His presence you must come out from all that is evil and be separate, and then He will be a Father to you, and you His son or daughter. Do you know His presence ? If you want to know it, you will know it. Give yourself up to Him, wholly and entirely, for as you give yourself wholly you shall be holy. Holiness lies in being wholly Christ's. A NEW YEAR'S PROMISE {For New Year's Day) ' My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.' — Exodus xxxiii. 14. I. The Call to Service.- — -To-day there is a call to consecrate again ourselves and our time to the service of Almighty God : as this new year stretches before us all uncertain in its issue, to step out, upheld by the great resolve that by God's help our feet shall be set upon a higher ridge than before, that we shall go across a battle-field where we shall not always be the vanquished, that our lives shall have less of self in them and more of God, that we will cast away some garment that impedes our every step and rise and come to Jesus, that we will take the wider views, look for larger horizons. Dim and misty and all uncertain lies before us this coming year. As you and I have sat upon some hill in the early morning, and have seen all the country covered with a mist, here and there perhaps some hill top or mountain standing out, so lies our life before us to-day. But read these words of the text into that life, and they will intershine it, will irradiate it and make it to glow with the purpose and the power of our God. II. Freedom in Service. — Freedom is a necessity if we would enter into the meaning of the words of our text. Freedom is not licence to live to self, but power to live to God. And how is the presence here spoken of manifested but through love ? What are the de- sires that we are conscious of from time to time, desires for something better, something purer, something higher than we ourselves ever yet attained to — what are these but God bending down to the soul to draw it up to Him, and the soul reaching up to God that it may answer to that attraction ? In order that I may be able to render the free service of love, God has given me the power of refusing His love, and of refus- ing His service, in order that my service which is evoked by the love of God may be the service of a free and a willing man. So through the love of God raising in us an echo, the returning love of our soul, there comes the free service that we would render to God. In the family life and in the life of the family of God, first there comes the love, and then the love issues into the desire of obedience or of service on the part of the members of the family, and so that love of God that evokes my love in willing service is to me an abiding proof of the presence in me of One Who not only attracts but upholds, supports, uplifts me. And then there comes that mysterious guiding of the 116 hand of God of which we must be conscious from time to time in our lives. Looking back, we can see that there has been something mysterious from time to time that has shaped and guided our life, and we re- cognize the finger-marks of God upon the life. III. The Promised Rest. — And the rest that is promised, what are we to understand by that ? (a) Partakes of God's character. — If it is to come from God it is clear that it must partake of the character of God. When God rested from the work of creation, as we read, did it mean inactivity, or did it mean a passing on to further and still greater work ? Our Lord has answered that question for us, ' My Father worketh hitherto and I work ' — work, progress in work, change in work. In active loving service there is rest for the spirit of man. There stands be- fore us the Central Figure in the history of the world, and from His lips is coming the precious promise, ' Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,' and He goes on to tell us still, ' Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls '. To take the yoke, the daily burden under the guiding hand of God, to do the Lord's work that He sets for you and me to-day, to live the life of God by the power that God can give us — thus may we find rest unto our souls. In doing the will of God alone is there rest for the soul of man. We look into the Garden of Gethsemane and we see the Lord battling there with all the evil weight of temptation, and we see at last the human will bending to the will of God the Father ; then it is that the rest begins and the agony is over, ' Never- theless not My will but Thine be done '. (b) Sanctified by the presence of God. — In pro- portion as we learn to recognize the presence of God with us we shall be able to bow our will before God. In that surrender and in the active service of God that follows depend upon it we shall experience the promised rest. To-day once more we try by the power of God to prepare our hearts that the presence of God may be there. Let us rise to the height of our vocation ! Try sometimes to take wider views, to look to more boundless horizons ; not always to walk with our heads down and hearts heavy and lives depressed, but to look up into the sunshine. ■ References. — XXXIII. 14. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1583. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th series), p. 249. R. Higinbotham, Sermons, p. 84. C. Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. Ixv. 1904, p. 22. C. Stanford, Central Truths, p. 227. XXXIII. 14, 15.— T. G. Rooke, The Church in the Wilderness, p. 139. R. H. McKira, The Gospel in the Christian Year, p. 61. XXXIII. 15. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlviii. No. 2811. XXXIII. 18.— W. Winn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. 1893, p. 262. R. Waddy Moss, The Discipline of the Soul, p. 219. XXXIII. 18, 19.— H. Varley, Spiritual Light and Life, p. 113. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 264. ' I will make all my goodness pass before thee . . . and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.' — Exodus xxxiii. 19. God's goodness appeareth in two things, giving and forgiving. — Matthew Heney. Ver. 3. EXODUS XXXIV Ver. 7. References. — -XXXIII. 19. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 553. XXXIII. 19-23.— C. H. Osier, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv. 1908, p. 121. XXXIII. 23.— R. Collyer, Where the Light Dwelleth, p. 249. XXXIV. 1-10, 27-35.— A. B. Davidson, The Called of God, p. 129. XXXIV. 2.— J. W. Mills, After Glow, p. 111. ' Neither let [the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. ' — Exodus xxxiv. 3. St. John of the Cross remarks that by this verse the soul is taught that ' he who seeks to climb the mount of perfection and to hold communion with God must not only renounce all things but must not even allow his appetites, which are the beasts, to feed within sight of the mount.' THE USE OF ISOLATED MOMENTS ' No man shall come up with thee.'— Exodus xxxiv. 3. I. Here was a Divine call to solitude. There are moments of many souls in which they are doomed to be alone — to have no man with them. The inspira- tions of genius are such moments ; the voices of the crowd then sound from afar. The throbs of con- science are such moments ; the heart then speaks to it- self alone. The arrests by sickness are such moments ; we feel shunted from the common way. The ap- proaches of death are such moments ; the hour comes to all, but it comes separately to each. We should have missed something from the Bible if amid the many voices of God there had been no place found for such moments as these. But with this verse of Exodus before us, the want is supplied. I learn that my times of solitude as well as my days of crowded- ness are a mission from the Divine. II. There is a lesson which my soul can only get from solitude; it is the majesty of the individual. Society tells me I am only a cipher — an insignificant drop in a mighty stream. But when I am alone, when the curtain is fallen on my brother man, when there seems in the universe but God and I, it is then I know what it is to be an individual soul ; it is then that there breaks on me the awful solemnity, the dread responsibility, the sublime weightedness, of having a personal life. III. Therefore it is that betimes my Father sum- mons me into the solitude. Therefore it is that betimes He calls me up to the lonely mount and cries, ' Let no man come with thee '. Therefore it is that betimes He shuts the door on my companion- ships, and bars the windows to the street, and deafens the ear of the world's roar. He would have me see myself by His light, measure myself by His standard, know myself even as I am known. — G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 23. Reference. —XXXIV. 5.— J. Halsey, The Spirit of Truth, p. 34. 'And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.' — Exodus xxxiv. 6. Compare Cromwell's words in his letter to Fleetwood of 1652 : ' The voice of Fear is : If I had done this ; if I had avoided that ; how well it had been with me. Love argueth in this wise : What a Christ have I ; what a Father in and through Him ! What a Name hath my Father: merciful, gracious, long-suffer- ing, abundant in goodness and truth ; forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. What a Nature hath my Father : He is Love ; free in it, unchange- able, infinite ! ' Then the Recorder stood up on his feet, and first beckoning with his hand for silence, he read out with loud voice the pardon. But when he came to these words, 'The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, pardoning iniquity and transgressions, and sins ; and to them, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven,' etc., they could not forbear leap- ing for joy. For this you must know, that there was conjoined herewith every man's name in Mansoul ; also the seals of the pardon made a brave show. — Bunyan, Holy War. Reference. ■ — • XXXIV. 6. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Exodus, etc., p. 195. ' Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and trans- gression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.' — -Exodus xxxiv. 7. In his reminiscences of Erskine of Linlathen, Dean Stanley recalls how the Scottish theologian ' was fond of dwelling on the passages in the Bible which bring out the overbalance of love and mercy as against vengeance and wrath. " This," he said, " shows the right proportion of faith." And one of these to which he often referred was the close of the second commandment — " visiting the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto ( — not thousands, as of individuals — but) unto the thousanth and thou- santh generation — (quoting the words of the Hebrew original — ) of them that love Me ". I never read that part of the commandment without thinking of this saying, and of the tones in which he uttered it.' THE DARK LINE IN GOD'S FACE ' That will by no means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.' — Exodus xxxiv. 7. I. Consider the Proof of this Dark Line. — 'And that will by no means clear the guilty.' Mark, at the outset, how clear is the testimony of Scripture. In the first story of God's dealing with man, that story of the Garden which foreshadows all His love and grace, we see it in the face of God. Adam and Eve are driven out of Eden, and the angel with the flaming sword which turned every way keeps the way of the tree of life. That is the first declaration that God will by no means clear the guilty. Mark it again on the broader page of universal history. The one truth of which all secular historians are sure is that the Nemesis of judgment forgets nothing and forgives nothing. In narrower spheres of life the truth is as evident and as appalling. The little child who is ushered into life, misshapen in body, cramped in mind, darkened in spirit, has done 117 Ver. 7. EXODUS XXXIV Ver. 14. no sin, but its helplessness and torture are the terrifying proofs that God will by no means clear the guilty, and that He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children. Mark it again in the teaching of Jesus. There is scarcely a parable which does not emphasize it. But the more convincing and definite sayings of Jesus are those which affirm that this dark line remains in God's face in the world to come. He speaks in grave warning of the outer darkness, the everlasting fire, the shut door, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. II. Consider the Significance of this Dark Line in the Face of God. — Have you never known a human face in which there were lines, at first sight stern and forbidding, but as you learned their mean- ing, and came to know what lay behind their severity, they gave the face its strength and distinction and charm ? This dark line makes God wondrously beautiful. Its first significance is His inflexible justice. It declares that God is unswervingly just and impartially righteous towards all men. Now we can look up at that dark line and see its beauty. Its second significance is His wrath at sin. The darkest line in a human face is the line of an anger which is shot through with grief. It is not other- wise with the face of God. The third significance is His passionate desire for holiness. Here we touch the deeper significance. Where only justice and aggrieved wrath are found there is no room for mercy or for healing, but where a passionate desire for holiness lodges, there is hope even for the worst. This line in God's face is darker when it sees the sin of His own, because of His passion for holiness. III. Now let us Learn why so Many Refuse to see the Truth and Beauty of This Dark Line. — The reason is that one of the most controlling truths in God's character is overlooked. What stirs Ood to the depths is not suffering, but sin. If men would take God's way, and deal first with the world's sin, the world's suffering would greatly cease. Nowhere can it be more movingly seen than at the Cross that God will by no means clear the guilty. Nowhere is it more sadly plain that He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, than when He laid the sins of men upon the Son of Man. In the Cross we see the dark line of God's face, and understand His justice, His grieved anger, and His passionate desire for holiness. Had there been no dark line in God's face there would have been no Cross. What Jesus saw as He was dying was this line in a face of love dark with anger at the sin of man. — W. M. Clow, The Cross in Christian Ex- perience, p. 28. References. — XXXIV. 7. — H. Ward Beecher, Sermons (4th Series), p. 183. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—Exodus, etc., p. 199. XXXIV. 8, 9.— J. K. Popham, Sermons, p. 116. ' O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us ; for it is a stiff-necked people.' — Exodus xxxiv. q. Read that account on the proclaiming of God's name to Moses given in the 33rd and 34th chapters of Exodus, ' The Lord, The Lord God, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, without clearing the guilty' (which last expression refers to the sacrifice of Christ, and just means through an atonement). As soon as Moses heard it, he thought, This is just the God that we want, for the people are continually committing sin, and this is a sin-forgiving God ; and Moses made haste and said, Go with us ; for this is a stiff-necked people. That for is an extraordinary word. — Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, Letters, p. 121. THE DIVINE JEALOUSY 'For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.' — Exodus xxxiv. 14. Is jealousy primarily a vice masking as a much-suffer- ing virtue, or is it a virtue that has caught many of the basenesses of a vice ? May we ascribe jealousy to the holy and glorious God without reflecting the least stain of dishonour upon His nature ? I. Our literature, like that of all nations, indeed, abounds in pictures of this consuming passion. Per- haps the most familiar and impressive delineation of the passion is that presented by Shakespeare in his great masterpiece, ' Othello the Moor '. If you recall the chief outlines of the tragedy you will have a con- crete illustration before you from which to start in studying the subject of the Divine jealousy. 1. Our condemnation of jealousy is not infrequently condemnation of the ignorance and infatuation with which it is mixed. Jealousy must always rank with the vices rather than virtues when, like that of Othello, it is blind — blind with the guilty blindness that will not consent to see. 2. Our condemnation of jealousy is very often condemnation of the despotic temper, in which it has its root. We class it with the vices rather than the virtues, because in many cases it is not love seek- ing the just return of love. How often is it thinly disguised ambition, aggressive and overbearing ego- tism ? I have no doubt Shakespeare meant us to recognize an element of this sort in the jealousy of Othello. 3. Our condemnation of jealousy, again, is some- times the condemnation of moral unfitness to win and to retain the love that has been vainly sought or miserably abused. The temper is often a vice, because the chilled affection that has provoked it is the just retribution of neglect, ungraciousness, intem- perance of disposition and behaviour. 4. Our condemnation of jealousy is often a con- demnation of the merciless and savage forms in which it expresses itself. We class it with the vices rather than with the virtues, because when the passion is once encouraged it tends to become a masterful impulse akin to homicidal madness. II. The flaws in our current human jealousies not- withstanding, may not the very highest moral and 118 Ver. 29. EXODUS XXXIV Ver. 29. spiritual forces go to inform and energize this senti- ment? The heart which upon just and righteous occasion is incapable of jealousy is likewise incapable of love. Love has rights it can never renounce with- out proving false to its own deepest qualities. And if no love can compare with God's, no right can rival the right that is inherent in the foundation qualities of that love. All humane and civilized governments which ac- count themselves responsible for the well-being of the people committed to their care are characterized by this temper of jealousy, and the strength of the temper is a test of their very right to exist. In such cases the passion is emphatically a virtue. The jealousy exercised in the interests of others must be holy and beneficent. God will brook no in- trusion into His work, no division of His authority, no departure from His laws. He alone can guide us through the rocks and whirlpools, and bring us to our far-off goal. That He should be supreme is the very salvation of the universe. III. Now let us face the question : if jealousy has this high and holy basis, and if God's jealousy does not need to be held in check because of the imperfec- tion of knowledge, the risk of mistake, or the fear lest the passion once kindled should hurry into inor- dinate and unconsidered excess, is not the Divine type of the passion likely to be more terribly intense and overwhelming than any of the modern types we find around us? God gives incalculably more love than others, and 'He is moved with a deeper in- dignation when you suffer a rival to reign in His place. Mark how this feature reappears in the character and teaching of Jesus Christ, who is the image of the Father's person and glory. ' He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.' The holy jealousy of Christ's life is as true a hint of the surpassing qualities of His love as the vicariousness of His bitter death. — T. G. Selby, The Lesson of a Dilemma, p. 102. References. — XXXIV. 14. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 502. XXXIV. 23.— C. S. Robinson, Simon Peter, p. 41. SPIRITUAL BEAUTY ' Moses wist not that . . . his face shone.' — Exodus xxxiv. 29. Spiritual beauty is loveliest when it is unconsciously possessed. I. Moses has been closeted with God. The glory of the Lord has been poured upon him, bathing him in unearthly brightness, so that when he returns to the mountain-base his countenance shines like the light. The same transformation is effected every day, and by the same means. Spiritual communion alters the fashion of the countenance. The supreme beauty of a face is its light, and spirituality makes ' a face illumined '. The face of Moses was transfigured by the glory of the Eternal. II. But 'Moses wist not that his face shone'. That is the supreme height of spiritual loveliness ; to be lovely, and not to know it. Surely this is a lesson we all need to learn. Virtue is so apt to become self-conscious, and so to lose its glow. 1. Take the grace of humility. Humility is very beautiful when we see it unimpaired. It is exquisite with the loveliness of Christ. But there is a self- conscious humility which is only a very subtle species of pride. Humility takes the lowest place, and does not know that her face shines. Pride can take the lowest place, and find her delight in the thought of her presumably shining face. 2. Charity is a lovely adornment of the Christian eye, but if charity be self-conscious it loses all its charm. The Master says that true charity does not let the left hand know what the right hand doeth. The counsel is this — do not talk about thy giving to thyself. Do not let it be done in a boastful self- consciousness, or its beauty is at once impaired. 3. It is even so with the whole shining multitude of virtues and graces. No virtue has its full strength and beauty until its possession is unnoticed by its owner. Virtue must become so customary as to be unconsciously worn. III. And so it is that the problem shapes itself thus — we must become so absorbed in God as to for- get ourselves. We cannot gaze much upon God's face and remain very conscious of ourselves. — J. H. Jowett, Meditations for Quiet Moments, p. 22. THE ELEMENT OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS IN CHARACTER 1 Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with Him.' — Exodus xxxiv. 29. ' (Samson) wist not that the Lord was departed from him.' — Judges xvi. 20. Moses wist not, he did not know, that the skin of his face shone after he had been with God. Samson wist not, he did not know, that the strength which he had with God had departed from him until he arose and wished to shake himself as at other times, and then he found, and it was a sad discovery, that all his strength was gone, that the Lord had gone away from him. Now why was this ? Why were they both unconscious, one that his appearance was so glorified and the other that he had become so weak ? In both cases this unconsciousness was due to their former way of life. I. Think of Moses. — You cannot read the story in the early books of the Bible without having the truth brought very closely home that Moses was a man of prayer. He never forgot the need of supplication, of asking God to help him in every hour of his difficulties as he led the children of Israel through the many trials of the wilderness. He was a man who trusted in God. He never forgot that he was in God's hands, and he thought all the time of the honour and glory of God. He did not think of how he himself could gain honour and glorify himself, but he remembered the great truth that every one who loves God must learn, that we must seek .first the honour and glory of God. And so throughout his life he was one who spent much time in God's presence, and all this had an effect upon his character. It brought him more 119 Ver. 29. EXODUS XXXIV Vrer. 30. and more into union with God Almighty, and he be- came more humble, maybe. He remembered all the time that God was his loving Father, and that his life was safe in the keeping of God, and that all the people who were trusted to his care would be safe, because they were in God's hands. But here is the remarkable fact, he does not seem to have been conscious of it. He does not seem to have recognized his own power and his own greatness ; he thought of the glory of God. And this was the most marked and most evi- dent when he was in the mount with God. He met God face to face. He had the letters written upon the tables of stone, and he brought them down and gave them to the children of Israel, and when he came down from the mountain a wonderful thing happened : his very countenance shone so that he was compelled to veil his face before the people could look upon him and he could speak to them. Yes, so it was with Moses in some marvellous way, because he lived so near to God there was beauty in his life and in his character. He came down from the mountain, and he was a different man from what he was when he went up. II. There are many People to-day, and there have been many people in every age in the world's history, who are also very anxious to know what they are like in the sight of God. It may be that they have so often drawn near God that they have humbled them- selves, that they think themselves the greatest sinners of all (like Saint Paul, who, we know, was such a holy man and yet thought he was the least of all saints), and they are disappointed, it may be, and cast down ; but here is a great encouragement which I would bring to you, that if you feel your sin is so great you can yet feel that the power of the Saviour is greater, that if you are conscious of your terrible state in God's sight, that there is One Who has taken the sin upon Himself, and all is well. It may be that the work of these people for God, though it seems so unimportant, will one day be recognized, and their faces will shine. III. Look at Samson. — He was entrusted with a great gift, he was a very strong man ; but that great physical strength given him by God was given to him for a special purpose. He, like Moses, had work to do for his God. He was a chosen vessel, he was to be used of God. He was set apart to bring salvation to the people, and yet he seems to have thought of his own strength, and not of the honour and glory of God. He tampered with temptation. He went into the very stronghold of the Philistines, into Gaza, and then all through his life forgot the work he had been called to do. The years passed by, and Samson forgot God. The life of Samson seems so sad when we think of his great opportunities, what he might have been, and how he failed. And why was it ? It surely was that great reason that he had forgotten God. If he had remembered that he was set apart, if he had under- stood that from his earliest years his work in life was to free the people from the burden of the Philistines and from the trouble that was in the country, he would have looked up to God and trusted Him and been able to do great things for God. IV. We need to Live very near the Lord Jesus Christ if our life is to be a life of usefulness and bring honour and glory to God. We need to sink ourselves, to be very humble, not to trust in our own strength, but to put all our trust in our God. Then our life, like Moses' life, will be a life of usefulness. We shall not get into the bad habits which bind so many people as Samson was bound, but we shall be able to help others on the heavenly road. ' When he came down from the mount, Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.' — Exodus xxxiv. 29. Christians that are really the most eminent saints, and therefore have the most excellent experiences, . . . are astonished at and ashamed of the low de- grees of their love and thankfulness, and their little knowledge of God. Moses, when he had been con- versing with God in the mount, and his face shone so bright in the eyes of others as to dazzle their eyes, wist not that his face shone. — Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (part iii.). Men of elevated minds are not their own historians and panegyrists. So is it with faith and other Chris- tian graces. Bystanders see our minds ; but our minds, if healthy, see but the objects which possess them. As God's grace elicits our faith, so His holi- ness stirs our fear, and His glory kindles our love. Others may say of us, 'here is faith,' and 'there is conscientiousness,' and ' there is love ' ; but we can only say, 'this is God's grace,' and 'that is His holi- ness,' and ' that is His glory '. — Newman, Lectures on Justification, p. 337. Let thy face, like Moses', shine to others, but make no looking-glasses for thyself. — Jeremy Taylor. The late Dr. Andrew Bonar, when visiting Mr. Moody at Northfield, was out in his garden at early morning one day talking with his host. Along came a band of happy students, who shouted out : ' We've been having an all-night prayer meeting ; can't you see our faces shine ? ' Dr. Bonar turned to them, and said, with a quiet smile, and shake of the head : ' Moses wist not that his face shone '. References. — XXXIV. 29. — W. J. Back, A Book of Lay Sermons, p. 247. S. G. McLennan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxv. 1904, p. 83. T. Teignmouth Shore, The Life of the World to Come, p. 157. W. A. Gray, The Shadow of the Hand, p. 177. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture. — Exodus, etc., p. 204. XXXIV. 29-35. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvi. No. 2143. ' Behold, the skin of his face shone.' — Exodus xxxiv. 30. Make conscience of beginning the day with God. For he that begins it not with Him, will hardly end it with Him. It is he that finds God in his closet that will carry the savour of Him into his house, his shop, and his more open conversation. When Moses had been with God in the mount, his face shone, he brought of that glory into the camp. — Bunyan. High gracious affections leave a sweet savour and relish of Divine things on the heart, and a stronger bent of soul towards God and holiness ; as Moses' 120 Ver. 1. EXODUS XXXV. -XL Ver. 13. face not only shone while he was in the mount, ex- traordinarily conversing with God, but it continued to shine after he came down from the mount. — Jonathan Edwards. 'Millais was the best trained of all,' says Mr. Holman Hunt in his History of Pre-Raphaelitism (i. p. 139). ' Not one hour of his life had been lost to his purpose of being a painter. The need of groping after systems by philosophic research and deductions was superseded in him by a quick instinct which enabled him to pounce as an eagle upon the prize he searched for. . . . He felt the fire of his message ; it seemed to make his face shine, so that Rossetti, to justify an expression of his in " Hand and Soul," said that when he looked at Millais in full, his face was that of an angel.' Reference. — XXXIV. 30. — John Ker, Sermons, p. 170. * These are the words which the Lord hath commanded, that ye should do them.' — Exodus xxxv. i. Religion is the recognition of all our duties as if they were Divine commandments. — Kant. References.— XXXV. 21. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 213. ' And he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.' — Exodus xxxv. 31. Religion devotes the artist, hand and mind, to the service of the gods ; superstition makes him the slave of ecclesiastical pride, and forbids his work altogether, in terror or disdain. — Rltskin, On the Old Road (I.). ' And he hath put it in his heart that he may teach.'— Exodus xxxv. 34. The art which scorns all point of contact with morals, which denies all responsibility as a teacher, and knows no law but itself — nay, which evokes from the artist no real self-restraint, no recognition of the consecrating power of his gift, is a sterile art which has missed its purpose. — Morris Joseph, The Ideal in Judaism, p. 180. ' The people bring much more than enough for the service of the work, which the Lord commanded to make.' — Exodus xxxvi. 5. When will the earth again hear the glad announce- ment that the people bring much more than enough for the service of the work, which the Lord com- manded to make ? Yet, until we bring more than enough, at least until we are kindled by a spirit which will make us desire to do so, we shall never bring enough. — Julius Hare in Guesses at Truth. References. — XXXVII. 7. — S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 103. XXXVII. 23.— Ibid. vol. ii. p. 145. And he made the altar of incense of shittim wood . . . and he overlaid it with pure gold.' — Exodus xxxvii. 25, 26. The carved and pictured chapel — its entire surface animated with image and emblem — made the parish church a sort of book and Bible to the people's eye. — Emerson, Essay on Religion. References.— XXXVIII. 8.— S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 189. XXXVIII. 26, 27.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1581. XXXIX. 8. — T. Champness, New Coins from Old Gold, p. 234. ' A bell and a pomegranate, round about the hem of the robe.'— Exodus xxxix. 26. The golden bells on this ephod, by their precious matter and pleasant sound, do well represent the good profession that the saints make ; and the pome- granates the fruit they bring forth. And as, in the hem of the ephod, bells and pomegranates were con- stantly connected, as is once and again observed, there was a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, so it is in the true saints. Their good profession and their good fruit do constantly accompany one another. The fruit they bring forth in life evermore answers the pleasant sound of their profession. — Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (part iii.). 'And Moses did look on all the work, and behold they had done it as the Lord had commanded, even so had they doneit.' — Exodus xxxix. 43. Though the gift of inspiring enthusiasm for duty and virtue is like other gifts, very unequally distri- buted among well-meaning persons, I do not believe that anyone who had himself an ardent love of good- ness ever failed to communicate it to others. He may fail in his particular aims, he may use ill-devised methods, meet with inexplicable disappointments, make mistakes which cause him bitter regret ; but we shall find that after all, though the methods may have failed, the man has succeeded ; somewhere, some- how, in some valuable degree, he has — if I may use an old classical image — handed on the torch of his own ardour to others who will run the race for the prize of virtue. — Sir Leslie Stephen. Reference. — XL. 1-16.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, etc., p. 223. ' Thou shalt set up the tabernacle of the tent of the congrega- tion.'— Exodus xl. 2. What makes worship impressive is just its publicity, its external manifestation, its sound, its splendour, its observance universally and visibly, holding its sway through all the details both of our outward and of our inward life. — Joubert. All the charm of ritual and ceremonial in worship has for Pater an indefinable and constant attraction. He is for ever recurring to it, because it seems to him to interpret and express an emotion, a need of the human spirit, whose concern is to comprehend if it can what is the shadowy figure, the mysterious will, that moves behind the world of sight and sense. — A. C. Benson, Pater, p. 216. ' And thou shalt sanctify Aaron, that he may minister to me in the priest's office.' — Exodus xl. 13. This very Aaron, whose infirmity had yielded to so foul an idolatry, is chosen by God to be a priest to himself. As the light is best seen in darkness, the mercy of God is most magnified in our unworthiness. — Bishop Hall. 121 Ver. 16. EXODUS XL Ver. 37. Abraham Lincoln once used this passage to defend his appointment to a high position of some official who had wronged and opposed him. He argued from God's magnanimity. 'I have scriptural authority for appointing him. You remember that when the Lord was on Mount Sinai getting out a commission for Aaron, that same Aaron was at the foot of the mountain making a false god for the people to worship. Yet Aaron got his commission, you know.' 1 Thus did Moses : according to all that the Lord commanded him, so did he.' — Exodus xl. i6. I lighted in the Journal on a very appreciative notice of Faraday, whose death I was grieved to observe. It is by one who signs himself A. de la Rive, and I am sure you will be gratified by the close of it. After describing his scientific career, and speaking of the failing health of latter years, he says, ' . . . Sa fin a ete aussi douce que sa vie ; on peut dire de lui qu'il s'est endormi au Seigneur. J'ai rare- ment vu un chretien plus convaincu et plus conse- quent.' That word consequent I like — one who follows it up into all its consequences. — De. John Kek, Letters, pp. 40-41. ' So Moses finished the work.' — Exodus xl. 33. It is more of this quality of will that is needed — this faithful, loyal temperament that cannot put its hand to the plough and afterwards lightly turn back. A persistent will — patient and unfaltering — above all things it is well to nurse this quality in children — faithfulness to the work once taken in hand, be it ever so trivial. Faithfulness is the backbone of faith, and without faith enthusiasm will fade or flicker, after which virtue will be very moderate indeed. And faithfulness implies a sense of duty, a habit of taking conduct as a series of acts that ought to be done, or as pledges that ought to be fulfilled — a sense of responsibility for the accurate and thorough ful- filment of every piece of work. — Dr. Sophie Bryant, Studies in Character, p. 170. ' If the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up.'— Exodus xl. 37. All our troubles come from impatience, from not trusting God. It is like moving, when the cloud is still. — General Gordon, Letters, p. 268. 122 LEVITICUS LEVITICUS— THE BOOK OF LAWS This book has been aptly called the handbook of the priests. The content of the book is linked to the subjects dealt with in Exodus and is in direct con- tinuation thereof. I. Dedication. — In this division there is revealed the provision of God for the approach of His people to Himself in worship. The offerings are first de- scribed and then their laws are enunciated. There fol- lowed instructions concerning the method of offering, which revealed the true attitude of the worshipper. II. Meditation. — The second division consists of a brief historical portion which gives an account of the actual ceremony of the consecration of the priests and the tabernacle, and the common cement of worship. III. Separation. — While provision for approach was made, and the method of appropriation was pro- vided there were still very definite conditions which must be fulfilled in order that the people might avail themselves of the provision made. These conditions may be summarized as those of entire separation to God. This division also deals with the responsi- bilities of the priests. IV. Consecration. — The feasts of Jehovah were the national signs and symbols of the fact that the people, dedicated to God as the offering witnessed, permitted to approach through the mediation of the priestly service, separated in all the details of life, were by God consecrated to Himself. V. Ratification. — The laws of ratification consisted of the outward signs of the principle of possession to be observed in the land together with solemn promises and warnings. The first sign was of the sabbath of the land. In the seventh year of rest the original Ownership of God was recognized. The second sign was that of the jubilee, wherein great human inter-relationships, dependent upon the fact of Divine possession, were insisted upon. The book ends with a section dealing with vows. The principle laid down is that it is not necessary that vows should be made, but that if they are made they must be religiously observed. — G. Campbell Morgan, The Analysed Bible, p. 55. References. — I. 1. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1771. I. 4, 5. — Spurgeon, Twelve Sermons on the Atonement, p. 49. 1. 5.— Ibid. p. 383. 1. 9.— J. Flemming, The Gospel in Leviticus, p. 46. I. 7. — J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 171. II. 1, 2. — J. Flemming, The Gospel in Leviticus, p. 96. II. 11. — Herbert Windross, The Life Victorious, p. 17- IV. 2, 3.— Ibid. p. 107. IV. 3.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 739. IV. 6 and 7. — Spurgeon, Twelve Sermons on the Atonement, p. 395. VI. 13. — Bishop Bickersteth, Ser- mons, p. 16. VIII. 22, 23.— H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, p. 212. HOLY AND COMMON ' This shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations : ye shall put a difference between holy and unholy, between clean and unclean.'— Leviticus x. io. Rehearse the circumstances : They had confused ' holy ' and ' common '. I. This distinction was the leading idea of religion for many years. It was not based upon any intrinsic difference, moral or physical. Nor was it confined to Judaism. II. Now, something has changed our way of think- ing. Priesthood cannot be regarded apart from the personal quality of the man. The punishment of sacrilege, as such, has been everywhere abolished. III. Is this because our time is less religious ? No, but because it is more so. The change has been effected by Christ. He has subordinated every other distinction to the fundamental one of intrinsic good- ness or badness. IV. But the distinction of 'holy' and 'common' is a constant one also. The governing principle seems to be that goodness is of transcendent value ; and lifts into value everything connected with itself. — S. D. McConnell, Sermon Stuff, p. 101. THE SCAPEGOAT Leviticus xvi. 8-22. Among a primitive people who seemed to have more moral troubles than any other and to feel greater need of dismissing them by artificial means, there grew up the custom of using a curious expedient. They chose a beast of the field, and upon its head symbolic- ally piled all the moral hard-headedness of the several tribes ; after which the unoffending brute was banished to the wilderness and the guilty multitude felt relieved. However crude that ancient method of transferring mental and moral burdens, it had at least this redeem- ing feature ; the early Hebrews heaped their sins upon a creature which they did not care for and sent it away. In modern times we pile our burdens upon our dearest fellow-creatures and keep them permanently near us for further use. What human being but has some other upon whom he nightly hangs his troubles as he hangs his different garments upon hooks and nails in the walls around him ?— James Lane Allen in The Mettle of the Pasture, pp. 161-162. THE HIGH PRIEST AND THE ATONEMENT ' On that day shall the priest make an atonement for you to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord.' — Leviticus xvi. 30. I. There were many priests, but only one high priest. He only could make atonement. Under the gospel all believers are priests. But there is but one high priest, 123 Ver. 11. LEVITICUS XVII Ver. 11. Jesus Christ, called the Great High Priest ; He alone can make atonement ; He only can forgive sin. II. The high priest on the day of atonement was an humbled priest. On this day he came out clothed in fine linen only. And Jesus, when He made atone- ment, was an humbled priest. They stripped from Him even the seamless garment that He wore. III. The high priest on that day was a spotless priest. Aaron had to be ceremonially purified. We have a spotless High Priest ; He needed no atonement for Himself — He had no sin to put away. IV. The high priest on that day was a solitary priest. It is remarkable that no disciple died with Christ. His disciples forsook Him and fled. We owe all our salvation to Him, and to Him alone. V. The high priest on that day was a laborious priest. Jewish authorities assert that on that day everything was done by Him. Jesus, though He had toiled before, yet never worked as He did on that wondrous day of atonement. — C. H. Spurgeon, Outline Sermons, p. 254. THE BLOOD OF CHRIST {For Good Friday and Easter) ' The life of the flesh is in the blood ... it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.' — Leviticus xvii. ii. The thoughts of Easter and of Good Friday must keep close together. They are, of course, at first sight, poles apart. And yet they are two sides of one great event. Consider this by help which God Him- self has given us in the Old Testament. The precious Blood of Christ, that certainly is a Good Friday thought, but yet that Blood is at the centre of our Easter feast. It is the power of eternal life. In it are washed the robes of the redeemed. The text from the old law gives us the clue to under- standing this. I. In the sacrifices of the Jewish Temple, meant to prepare for and point to Christ, the Blood was the most important thing. It was offered to God ; with it the holy place and the altar were sprinkled. With it the leper was touched. The high priest once a year carried it into the holiest before the mercy seat. It was the symbol of God's own presence. And the reason of this was in the belief that the Blood is the life : ' For the life of the flesh is in the blood '. To us carnage and blood-shedding mean the same, and speak only of the ghastly incidents of death. To the Jew blood-shedding meant release of life. The innocent animal gave its life for a high and Divinely ordered purpose. A wonderful mystery indeed. It declared the power of life that had passed through death. The ox or the goat could only die in its own time, but there was one way in which it could, as we see, give its life before its time by its owner's free will and at his cost. The animal stood, and was at least partly understood by the Jew to stand, for the man that offered it, and then the meaning begins to come clear. The life in man must die with the death of the body, and see corruption, and be no more, unless some stainless life — for the Temple victims had to be without spot or blemish — could be freely given up to pass out through death as an offering to God, and then it would bless and reconcile and purify. This it is which we, in its wonderful fulfilment, have been allowed to see. Good Friday shows the slaughter, the inhuman and cruel murder of the Holy One and the Just. It is a day of tragedy and gloom. All the same, there was done there the noblest thing ever done on earth, and it shines with glory amidst the darkness. For the life slaughtered was also a life laid down. The death which darkens the earth is also the coming out of the life, free, powerful, new, and quickening, as the glory of the Resurrection follows to prove. The death had to be, but it is the life that remains, and it sprinkles, and cleanses, and quickens. Unli ke the coarse natural blood of the old sacrifices, this life can still, in rite and symbol, give itself as blood to be drunk and to be consumed. ' The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.' It enters into us, and we live with a double life, our own, and His, and in the power of that life we can approach to God, having boldness to enter into the holiest by the Blood of Jesus. II. We have here the truth, at once severe and splendid, which Good Friday and Easter should leave with us. We have, like the animals slain of old in the Temple, our natural life in us which must die. If we live by the flesh, we must die ; but the Cross shows us a way of using death which makes it to be a power of life. We can make a sacrifice of life. It has its opportunities and chances, its dangers and risks, its sorrows and joys, its temptations, and through all we can carry the spirit of sacrifice. So we can do in small ways that which Jesus did through life, and completed on Calvary. We can mortify our members which are on the earth, we can die unto sin, we can be united with Jesus by His death. But such dying is really life. Like the slaughter of the victim, it sets free the blood which is the true life ; like the sacrifice of the Cross, it opens into the glory of the Resurrection. We are to reckon ourselves alive, not with the old life that must die, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus with the new life that cannot die. That is the mystery of Easter, gathering up all the sorrow and severity of Good Friday into its joy, and it sheds a glory over all life. This present life is not a thing merely to be despised and cast away. The body of the victim slain, slain to yield the blood, was not treated as a worthless carcass to be cast aside, but as holy food upon which the offerer might feed. The Body of the Redeemer, from which the Blood was shed upon the Cross, was a holy thing, and when He makes His Sacrament, it is not of the Blood only that He takes, but also : ' The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life '. The earthly life which has in it the spirit of sacrifice, gains already on earth a fuller strength and truer beauty. Thus it is, too, that even the bodies of Christians partake of the glory. The spirituality 124 Ver. 21. LEVITICUS XX Ver. 26. which despises them is not the spirituality of Scrip- ture or of Christ. Our bodily natures may be sancti- fied by the sacrifice of disciplined, sober, and thankful use as well as by the sacrifice of surrender. It must be for each as God appoints, and He calls. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE DWARF ' A dwarf . . . shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.' — Leviticus xx. 21. Under the old Hebrew priesthood the dwarf, while permitted to partake of the holy bread, was restrained from offering it to others. He was not to blame for being a dwarf, but only men without blemish, and who had the full measure of manly power, were per- mitted to exercise the functions of that holy office. I. It is the bitterest sorrow of weakness that a man cannot render aid to the helpless. And in the higher realm the sorest pang that a man can know is that he is so dwarfed in his spiritual nature that he cannot offer the bread of his God to his fellows. The physi- cal dwarf is very often, and indeed usually, without personal blame. It is his misfortune, which may have come to him by inheritance, or by accident. But the spiritual dwarf, while the conduct of others may have contributed to his lamentable condition, is in the last analysis personally responsible, for the power to emerge from such a condition is always within his reach. II. The Hebrew priest that was born a dwarf, or who had been dwarfed by accident or by cruel treat- ment in childhood, could never become anything else. No penitence, no care, no culture could ever give him the broad shoulders, the splendid presence, and the noble personality of the full-grown and mature man- hood necessary for his office. But God is more gracious in spiritual things, or rather the spirit is not subject to the limitations of the flesh, and the man who has been dwarfed by poverty, or affliction, or harsh treatment, into narrowness of vision and ex- perience, may through devotion and self-surrender to God emerge out of the dwarfed manhood he now knows into the large and splendid personality which shall give him the privilege of offering the bread of God to humanity. III. We do not need to be weak and powerless. We need not go along the way of life spiritual dwarfs. God is no respecter of persons. He is seeking for men and women to offer the bread of life to hungry souls. All that is needed is that we should surrender ourselves to Him for the highest and holiest service. What folly that for a few paltry dollars, or for a few years of sensual pleasure, or for a few shouts of applause from unthinking crowds, we should miss the building up of soul and character into those splendid proportions that shall fit us for Divine usefulness. — L. A. Banks, Sermons which have Won Souls, p. 211. References. — XX. 26. — J. Vaughan, Sermons (9th Series), p. 117. XXI.-XXIL— H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, p. 358. XXII. 21. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1897. XXIII. 42.— Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Sub- jects from the Old Testament, p. 1. XXIII.-XXVII.— J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 223. XXIV. 5-9.— J. H. Hol- ford, Memorial Sermons, p. 127. XXV. 9, 10. — J. Flemming, The Gospel of Leviticus, pp. 91, 123. XXV. 10. — J. A. Aston, Early Witness to Gospel Truth, pp. 23, 36. THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS ' Ye shall be holy unto Me, for I the Lord am holy.' — Leviticus xx. 26. The book of Leviticus is one which we all feel to be specially difficult. Yet there is no book that more amply repays study. At every point it proves itself to be the Word of God, and as such profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for inspiration in righteousness. While, by the advent of the Lord Jesus, many of the forms enjoined in Leviticus were abolished, the principles which found expression in these forms have been reasserted with greater force than ever. The book has a message for us to-day, and it is this message which we must now strive to discover. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is its insistence on the holiness of the body. Leviticus recognizes what is expressly asserted at a later period in revelation, that the body is meant to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, and as such must be kept holy unto God. I. It set before the Israelite his duty to God. In its religious aspect this code is the exposition of the first and great commandment. It bade the Israelite recognize Jehovah as the one object of worship. It bade him recognize Jehovah as the ultimate ground of all morality, it bade him see in what was good and right the expression of the will of God. It bade him recognize Jehovah as the Lord of Life and the Lord of Time, the giver of every good and perfect gift. Moreover it bade the Israelite recognize that Jehovah was a God terrible in His moral government. II. Then this law of holiness set before the Israelite his duty to his fellow-men. It endeavoured to ex- plain also the second great commandment of the law, ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself '. In the precepts that it lays down there is a wisdom and an enlightenment from which present-day legislators would do well to learn. To begin with, it puts social relations in their right place. But having defined the relation between our duty to God and our duty to man, it goes on to demand for our brother men j ustice, honesty, forbearance, kindness, purity, tender- ness, and love. III. And then this law of holiness set before the Israelite his personal duty as a member of the holy nation. This it did in an indirect manner by the regulations it enjoined for maintaining the purity of the priests. All Israelites were not priests and did not actually minister at the altar. But Israel was not allowed to forget that she was a priestly nation. With such care manifested that the priest who ministered to the law should be holy, pure, and with- out blemish, the law of necessity taught the Israelite how holy his God was, and at the same time taught him that he also must be holy if be would stand accepted in God's presence. Then having dealt with 125 Ver. 23. LEVITICUS XXV Ver. 23. the holy life in its Godward, manward, and selfward aspects, the section of Leviticus closes by announcing the rewards which God has promised to the obedient, and the punishment threatened to those who wilfully disobey. This code completes the short appendix, and the matter of vows brings the whole book to a close. — G. H. C. Macgkegok, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 31. SOJOURNING WITH QOD ' The land shall not be sold for ever ; for the land is Mine ; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.' — Leviticus xxv. 23. There are two views to be taken of that famous land about which so much of Old Testament history gathers. (1) When you are looking at the children of Israel passing out of Egypt and through the wilder- ness, their prospect of this promised land awaiting them reminds you of the heavenly inheritance held out to believers as the rest that remaineth for the people of God. (2) But when you think, of the Israelites in actual occupation of Canaan, then there are aspects of it which rather suggest the provision of earthly support during this mortal life, which God has pro- mised to His children here in this world. I. The first thing suggested is the sojourning con- dition of the children of God in this world. They are strangers and sojourners. It must be admitted in the first place that they have much in common with everybody else. All are lately come into exist- ence— ere long shall cease to be connected with the present order of things, and therefore sojourners. Those therefore are sojourners who really have in view another country ; another system of things as their durable inheritance. II. Observe a great element in this sojourning state emphasized in the text. To be strangers and so- journers has something depressing in it ; but a great element of gladness comes when we hear the voice that says ' The land is Mine ; ye are strangers and sojourners with Me ". For a believer this world be- comes God's world, and in his sojoumings he is assured of a Divine companionship and communion. III. What way of dealing with our earthly posses- sions is expected of us in this situation ? The ' prohibition implied that the Israelite was not to claim absolute ownership, nor was he to act as if he claimed it '. He had a use of it under restrictions, but the land continued to be the Lord's ; the Lord had the abiding possession ; the Israelite only a transient use as a stranger and a sojourner with God. And you are sojourners so that you are also stewards. These are your Loitl's goods. For the direct interest of the cause of Goa, be stewards — be stewards that shall not fear the reckoning. — Robeet Rainy, So- journing with God, p. 1. Reference. — XXVI. 2. — R. G. Soans, Sermons for the Young, p. 7. 126 NUMBERS NUMBERS References.— IV. 1-23.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2833. IV. 23.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture —Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 297. IV. 24-26.— Spur- geon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2829. IV. 49.— Ibid. vol. xxv. No. 1457. THE AARONIC BLESSING ' The Lord bless thee and keep thee.'— Numbers vi. 22-27. I. — ' The Lord bless thee and keep thee.' This is pre- eminently the blessing of the Father. The language sets forth the positive and negative side of God's ever-watchful beneficence. It involves all good gifts and deprecates all the opposite evils. II. — The second part of the benediction is especially the blessing of the Father through the Son. The words suggest the thought of favour and of revela- tion. The Aaronic blessing is a prophecy of the Incarnation, for we cannot help thinking of St. Paul's words, ' God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus '. The true characteristic of the revela- tion given by Christ was graciousness. III. — The blessing of the Holy Ghost is seen in the third movement of this benediction. The Holy Spirit lights up that glorious and gracious face of Christ before our eyes, and gives us peace thereby. — J. Mason, Sermon Year Book, 1891, p. 369. References. — VI. 22-27. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvi. No. 2170. VI. 23-27.— W. Binnie, Sermons, p. 58. W. Alexander, Verbum Grucis, p. 163. VI. 24-26.— W. F. Hook, Outlines of Sermons on the Old Testament, p. 35. J. Brand, The Dundee Pulpit, 1872, p. 113. VII. 9.— T. G. Rooke, The Church in the Wilderness, p. 174. VIII. 5-22.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2829. IX. — Ibid. vol. xli. No. 2407. IX. 11, 12.— Ibid. vol. xli. No. 2407. THE GUIDING PILLAR ' So it was alway : the cloud covered the tabernacle by day, and the appearance of fire by night' — Numbers ix. 16. I. Note the Double Form of the Guiding Pillar. — The fire was the centre, the cloud was wrapped around it. The same double element is found in all God's manifestations of Himself to men. In every form of revelation are present both the heart and core of light, which no eye can look upon, and the merciful veil which, because it veils, unveils ; because it hides, reveals ; makes visible because it conceals ; and shows God because it is the hiding of His power. It re- appears in both elements in Christ, but combined in new proportions, so as that ' the veil, that is to say, His flesh,' is thinned to transparency and all aglow with the indwelling lustre of manifest Deity. Note also the varying appearance of the pillar ac- cording to need. By day it was a cloud, by night it glowed in the darkness. Both these changes of aspect symbolize for us the reality of the Protean capacity of change according to our ever-varying needs, which for our blessing we may find in that ever-changing, unchanging, Divine presence which will be our companion, if we will. II. Note the Guidance of the Pillar.— When it lifts the camp marches ; when it glides down and lies motionless the march is stopped and the tents are pitched. Never, from moment to moment, did they know when the moving cloud might settle, or the resting cloud might soar. Is not that all true about us ? God guides us by circumstances, God guides us by His word, God guides us by His Spirit, speaking through our common sense and in our understandings, and, most of all, God guides us by that dear Son of His, in whom is the fire and round whom is the cloud. In like manner, the same absolute uncertainty which was intended to keep the Israelites (though it failed often) in the attitude of constant dependence, is the condition in which we all have to live, though we mask it from ourselves. III. The Docile Following of the Guide.—' At the commandment of the Lord they rested in their tents, and at the commandment of the Lord they journeyed.' Obedience was prompt ; whensoever and for whatso- ever the signal was given, the men were ready. What do we want in order to cultivate and keep such a disposition ? We need perpetual watchfulness lest the pillar should lift unnoticed. We need still more to keep our wills in absolute suspense, if His will has not declared itself. Do not let us be in a hurry to run before God. We need to hold the present with a slack hand, so as to be ready to fold our tents and take to the road, if God will. We need, too, to cultivate the habit of prompt obedience. If we would follow the pillar, we must follow it at once. — A. Maclaren, The Unchanging Christ, p. 203. References. — IX. 16. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 305. X. 1, 2. — C. Jerdan, Pastures of Tender Grass, p. 98. X. 10.— J. Baines, Sermons, p. 1. HOBAB'S OPPORTUNITY 'Come thou with us, and we will do thee good.' — Numbers x. 2g. Hobab was the son of Raguel the Midianite, who is called Reuel in Exodus n. 18, and elsewhere Jethro. Hobab was therefore the brother-in-law of Moses. When Jethro, having brought back Zipporah and her two sons to Moses (Exod. xvm.), returned to his own house, Hobab appeal's to have remained in the 127 Ver. 6. NUMBERS XI Ver. 9. camp. But now that the Israelites were about to continue their journey to the Promised Land, he expressed a desire to return to his own kindred and country. Moses, however, urged him to cast in his lot with the people of God, and he prevailed. The descendants of Hobab are spoken of in the books of Judges and Samuel as dwelling in Canaan. We have in the text : — I. A Cordial Invitation. — ' Come thou with us.' Three things are implied. He was invited : — 1. To conform to their principles. ' He could not remain with them and serve other gods.' 2. To share their privileges. 'The Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel.' 3. To enjoy their prospects. ' We are journeying unto the land,' etc. II. A Solemn Promise. — A. ' We will do thee good.' 1. By social intercourse. ' As iron sharpeneth iron,' etc. 2. By wise counsel. ' Admonish one another.' 3. By a holy example. ' Let your light so shine,' etc. 4 By genuine sympathy. ' Bear ye one another's burdens,' etc. B. ' What goodness the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee.' We can only give as we receive. — F. J. Austin, Seeds and Saplings, p. 31. References. — X. 29. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi. No. 916. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 145. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 314. X. 29-31. — -Hugh Black, University Sermons, p. 259 ; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxvii. 1905, p. 65. X. 33.— Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 328. X. 35. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 368. X. 35, 36. — J. E. C. Welldon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiv. 1894, p. 243. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 321 ; see also Outlines of Sermons on the Old Testament, p. 39. XI. 1-10. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2332. XI. 4.— C. Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. Iv. 1899, p. 265. i THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION ' There is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.' — Numbers xi. 6. We all know how after a certain time the children of Israel began to loathe the manna. Their soul re- jected it, it was light food. It was bread from heaven, says the Psalmist — angels' bread, and yet it proved dis- tasteful to the camp. The strange thing is that it was they — and not God's enemies — who found the manna such a distasteful dish. It was the children of Israel who felt the diet irksome, and the children of Israel were the people of God. I. That leads me by quite a competent spiritualizing — for did not Jesus say, ' I am the bread '? — to dwell on a very urgent matter, I mean the irksomeness inherent in religion. There is nothing on earth so paramount and vital as the relationship of the human soul to God. Yet men who have felt all that, and feel it now — and wherever an awakened soul is, there it is felt — such men and women, whensoever they reveal their souls, confess to the seasons, sometimes unbroken years, when religion was an irksome thing to them. Or again, one might say religion cannot be irksome if the great key-words of the New Testament be true. There is rest, and there is joy and love on the narrow path which Jesus Christ hath trodden. But for all that, there are few travellers on that path who have not felt the irksomeness of their religion. II. We detect it sometimes by the quiet relief we feel when our religious exercises are concluded — a certain secret sense of satisfaction when the prayer is got over, and the worship done. We detect it again in the way in which many try to put service in the place of personal religion. But the irksomeness of a quiet and abiding piety is seen above all in the love of religious excitement. III. I wonder if we can discern the grounds of this element of irksomeness in heart-religion ? Surely the first and the deepest is just this — religion is spiritual, and we are carnal. It is because we are far from Christlike yet ; it is because God is holiness and love and purity and truth, and because in religion we must walk with God, that even to the saint it has its irk- someness. Another reason for that same feeling is this, we strive and seem to make so little progress. But in our religion, I think it is the Cross above all else that does it. It is the fact that in the very centre there hangs the pallid figure on the tree. In other words, it is the abnegation, it is the humility and self-denial, it is the renunciation of much that is sweet to us, and the eye fixed on a dying and bleeding Saviour ; it is that, when life is sweet and full of music, and calling us as to the freedom of a bird, that may keep an element of irksomeness in all following of the blessed Lord. — G. H. Morrison, Sun-Rise, p. 279. DEW AND MANNA ' And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it.' — Numbers xi. g. Israel represents humanity in its pitiful failure to realize the goodness of Divine providence. I. Here are Usual and Unusual Mercies. — Dew is usual, manna is unusual. Dew falls everywhere and always ; not so manna. Life, however, receives both dew and manna. The sad fact is that we often fail to appreciate either class of mercies. II. Here are Natural and Spiritual Mercies. — Dew is a natural blessing ; manna represents a spiritual good. One is according to the established course of nature, the other a supernatural gift of God. And yet the distinction between natural and spiritual is largely man-made. To the Christian it is almost im- possible to differentiate between the two spheres. God is behind the dew as surely as the manna. The spiritual represents the supernatural, but not the unnatural. III. Here are Mysterious Processes in Life. — Who understands the dew? Who understands manna? The very word carries the idea of mystery. It con- 128 Ver. 26. NUMBERS XL, XIII Ver. 27. notes an inquiry — ' What is it ? ' None can evacuate either gift of its mystery. And life is full of mysteri- ous processes. There is mystery about the ordinary and mystery about the usual. If we give up religion because of its mystery, both logic and honesty will compel us to surrender a host of other things, for they are instinct with mystery. Life would be a dreary monotony if there were no mystery ; and you would not accept a religion devoid of mystery, for mystery is the sign of divinity. IV. 'Dew and Manna.' Life abounds in Com- mon Mercies. — ' When the dew fell upon the camp, the manna fell upon it.' It was a universal benefit. Both dew and manna were common to all Israel. Do not the best gifts of life bear the stamp of uni- versality ? The dew and manna fall upon ' the camp '. Sir Walter Scott, in the latter part of his life, said to a young friend, ' The older you grow, the more you will be thankful that the finest of God's mercies are common mercies '. It is profoundly true. The Apostle Jude writes of ' our common salvation '. Peter speaks of ' the common faith '. Moses spoke of ' the common death '. Recall that fine saying of Schiller's : ' Death cannot be an evil, for it is universal '. V. ' When the Dew fell upon the Camp in the Night, the Manna fell upon it.' Here are Associ- ated Mercies. VI. How regular, too, are'God's Mercies ! — ' When the dew fell, the manna fell.' Neither sprang out of the earth : they fell from wondrous heights. The sun never fails on any single day to appear. The air currents are always flowing. Harvest comes every year. God's constancy is the miracle of miracles. VII. God's Mercies do not Absolve Man from his Duty. — God sends the dew, but only that we may utilize the ground He thus prepares for us. God sends the manna, but it is «ot to be eaten just as it falls. Grace is to be improved. VIII. Dew and Manna are Typical Gifts. — They are typical in two respects : — 1. In the case before us the season of their bestow- ment is full of parabolic suggestiveness. When did these blessings fall ? ' In the night.' Spiritual bene- dictions are often richest in darkest hours. 2. Dew is the symbol of grace. Manna, too, is typical. In the 6th chapter of John's great gospel Christ sets Himself in apposition to the manna. — Dinsdale T. Young, Unfamiliar Texts, p. 189. References. — XI. 14. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 329. XI. 23.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 363. XI. 25. — G. Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, p. 11. XI. 26.— T. G. Rooke, The Church in the Wilderness, p. 209. Numbers xi. 26. Lord, Thy servants are now praying in the church, and I am staying at home, detained by necessary occasions, such as are not of my seeking, but of Thy sending. My care could not prevent them, my power could not remove them. Wherefore, though I cannot go to church, there to sit down at table with the rest of Thy guests, be pleased, Lord, to send me a dish of their meat hither, and feed my soul with holy thoughts. Eldad and Medad, though staying still in the camp (no doubt on just cause), yet prophesied as well as the other elders. Though they went not out to the spirit, the spirit came home to them. — Thomas Fuller. Numbers xi. 33. Lord, grant me one suit, which is this — deny me all suits which are bad for me : when I petition for what is unfitting, O let the King of heaven make use of His negative voice. Rather let me fast than have quails given with intent that I should be choked in eating them. — Thomas Fuller. References. — XI. 27. — W. J. Dawson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. Hi. 1897, p. 296. XI. 29.— T. G. Selby, The Holy Spirit and Christian Privilege, p. 215. W. Sunday, Inspira- tion, p. 168. T. De Witt Talmage, Sermons, p. 221. T. M. Rees, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 293. J. Warschauer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. Ixxiv. 1908, p. 417. XI. 34. — J. Baldwin Brown, The Soul's Exodus' and Pilgrimage, p. 279. XII. 3.— T. R. Stevenson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxix. 1891, p. 109. XIII. 16.— J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 213. G. Trevor, Types and the Antitype, p. 115. XIII. 17-33.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, Leviticus, and Num- bers, p. 332. XIII. 21, 23, 27.— R. Winterbotham, Sermons Preached in Holy Trinity Church, Edinburgh, p. 275. XIII. 23. — W. Brooke, Sermons, p. 30. A LAND FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY ' And they told Him, and said, We came unto the land whither Thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey ; and this is the fruit of it.' — Numbers xiii. 27. The idea suggested is, that the true disciples of the Lord Jesus are expected to show to the world some illustration of the heavenly country to which they are journeying. In a sense they have been there, and have come back. But in what sense ? I. The idea with many persons is, that the future condition of man is so completely different from this, that it is out of the question to attempt to form a conception of it. Heaven, they think, is absolutely unlike earth. Now, it is true, St. Paul tells us, ' that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath pre- pared for them that love Him.' But it is also true, ,as the Apostle goes on to say, that ' God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit '. Some people then are in a position to understand what the heavenly king- dom is like. They have ideas, true ideas, about it — foretastes, anticipations. In fact, ' Heaven ' is really the expansion and development of a life begun here below. ' He that hath the Son hath life.' II. What then has the true disciple to show as speci- mens of the produce of this unseen and unknown country ? Briefly, the character of Christ reproduced in him, by the Power of the Holy Spirit. It is faintly, imperfectly reproduced ; still it is reproduced. The more Christlike we are, the more truly shall we bear in our hands the ' fruit ' of the better land. III. It is by the presentation of these fruits of the land that souls are won. No doubt there are some 129 Ver. 30. NUMBERS XIII Ver. 30. persons in the world to whom Christ and everything belonging to Christ are only repulsive ; and these will scrutinize the disciple with an unfriendly eye, and re- joice if they can find, or fancy they find, any incon- sistency in his conduct. But there are also many others of a different temper. They are halting be- tween two opinions. They say, not of course in words, but by their feelings and manner, 'show us the fruits of the heavenly land, of which you think so much and speak so much. You are amongst us as a citizen of the heavenly city. Enable us to gather from your conduct what are the characteristics of that noble land, of that bright and glorious companionship.' What is the practical conclusion to be drawn from the whole subject thus discussed? Surely it is this — that we, who profess to serve and follow the Lord Jesus Christ, should be careful to recognize the re- sponsibility laid upon us to give a good report, like Caleb and Joshua, and not a bad report, like the ten other spies, of the unseen land. We shall give a bad report if our lives are not attractive, and are not con- sistent, or if we say, as the ten did, ' Well, it is true enough that the land is glorious and magnificent, but the difficulties to be overcome are so many, the foes that stand in the way of occupation so powerful, that it is useless to attempt to fight our way into it '. — Gordon Calthrop, Harvest and Thanksgiving Services, p. 157. THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF NUMBERS ' Let us go up at once and possess it.' — Numbers xiii. 30. The Book of Numbers tells the story of arrested deliverance. I. The book begins well. The object of the en- campment at Sinai has been accomplished. And now Jehovah had taken up His abode among His people to lead them to the Promised Land. But this land was not to be occupied peaceably ; the inhabitants of it had to be driven out. The land, which was in right theirs by the gift of God, had to become in fact theirs by actual conquest. Therefore the people, which up to this time had been the flock of Jehovah, were now to be organized as the army of Jehovah. This is the meaning of the census, the account of which occupies the opening chapters of the book, and has given the book its name in our English Bibles. By this census three lessons were taught Israel ; lessons which were enforced subsequently by the legislative enactments and the historical incidents recorded in the book. 1. Israel was taught the aloneness, the majesty, and the sovereignty of Jehovah her God. 2. Israel was taught also the separateness of the Levites as the priests of the law. 3. There was also taught the separateness of the people of Jehovah : this was implied of course in the other two lessons. . II. When the census was completed the march from Sinai began. Of this march we have the account in chapters ten to fourteen. I think it is most impor- tant to distinguish between this march and the subsequent wanderings. Under the trials of their wilderness experiences the people often fell. Their wilderness life was a chequered one, but it was on the whole a life of progress. They were all the time in the line of the will of God. The cloud was guiding them, steadily moving forward, each day bringing them nearer the Promised Land, and so after a brief period they reached Kadesh-Barnea on its very borders. III. But here a crisis occurred. God had willed that His people should have certain wilderness ex- periences. But by the time they reached Kadesh this had been learned, and God willed now that their wilderness experiences should cease. He said of Canaan, ' This is the land which I give,' not / will give, but I give to you. He set before them an open door, and said, ' Go up and possess the land '. But Israel refused to go up. At Kadesh-Barnea Israel deliberately refused to fall in with the purpose of But with this act of opposition the character of Israel's experiences became entirely changed — the wilderness ended, the temptation began ; the march ended, the wandering began. Of this time of temp- tation we may notice lessons : — 1. It was not in the purpose of God for Israel, it was not in the promise of God for Israel. It grieved Him sorely that they did not fall in with His purpose, and that He had so terribly to punish them, but their unbelief left Him no alternative. 2. The time of wandering was a time inconceivably blank and unutterably dreary. 3. Yet we must not go so far as to say that these years were utterly useless. God makes the very wrath of man to redound to His glory. This time of death and doom to the rebels of Kadesh was, in God's mercy, made a time of discipline to their children. 4. The time came to an end. The people were restored to obedience, and were once more willing to do what God told them. The forty years passed and they were brought back to Kadesh. When the new start was made it was found that obedience was the secret of victory. The nation was not perfect, far from it ; still it murmured, and still it had to be punished. But it had learned to believe in God and to obey God, and so it went forward to victory. — G. H. C. Macgregor, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 45. ' Let us go up at once and possess it ; for we are well able to overcome it' — Numbers xiii. 30. A favourite missionary text of Hugh Price Hughes. In one sermon, preached for the extinction of a debt, he said : ' Caleb and Joshua were confident that the tribes of Israel were well able to capture Palestine for three reasons : God had promised Canaan to them again and again ; He had already begun to accomplish their marvellous destiny by delivering them from Egypt and conducting them to the borders of the Promised Land, and although their enemies appeared to be strong, they were in reality hopelessly 130 Ver. 31. NUMBERS XIII., XIV Ver. 24. weak. God had with equal clearness promised the whole world to Christ.' References.— XIII. 30.— J. K. Popham, Sermons, p. 93. XIII. 30, 31.— H. Gorton Edge, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv. 1908, p. 183. ON THE EDGE OF THE LAND— AFRAID TO QO UP ' We be not able to go up against the people ; for they are stronger than we.'— Numbers xiii. 31. I. God has given us, His people, a great deliverance, and received each of us into it at our baptism. We have had our Red Sea. He has taught His cove- nant and law. We have had our Sinai ; the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, telling us what to believe, how to worship, how to obey. He calls us to enter on our privileges, full members of His Kingdom and Church, in the good land which He blesses ; fed with its milk and honey, in His Sacrament, and in all the grace and inward peace which He gives to His people. It will be a fighting life, as Israel's would have been at first, if they had gone up into Canaan : the world, the flesh, and the devil, are most real enemies ; but it may be a conquering life. Only for that there is but one secret — faith in God's help. But now comes the temptation. A voice speaks — it may be in your heart, it may be from some companion — and says : ' It is too big a thing for such as me. It is too hard. There is something which I shall never conquer. There are the enemies, all the many temptations, all the things against me, in the ways of the world, in companions ; and if I could beat the rest, there are the giants ; some strong passion that burns in me ; some lust, some pride or temper. Or there are the cities walled up, those habits that have fortified themselves in my life and my heart, and that hands cannot break down.' II. What shall we say? That the enemies are not strong and not many ? Surely not. The spies were right. The people of the land were strong ; the giants were formidable ; the cities were walled and very great. So it is now. The lusts of the flesh are very strong ; the snares of the world are very deceiving and difficult. Only something is left out of account. There are things stronger than walls and bulwarks. Those things are the righteous laws and holy will of God. Those cities which seemed so strong were really doomed. The sentence had gone out against them ; the iniquity of the Amorite was full. ' Their defence,' said faithful Caleb, ' is departed from them.' Evil is always really weak. It threatens us, it blusters against us, it makes itself out ever so much bigger than it is ; but go right up to it straight and you will find how weak it is, how it gives way, how its tempting or formidable shows are turned to paint and sham. Go right up to it straight, trusting not in your own strength, but in the Name of God. ' The Lord is with us, fear them not.' The unseen power is on your side. III. Remember that the Israelites were so far right, at least, in this : that if they did not attack they must go back to Egypt, and Egypt is the house of bondage. If you do not fight in God's name against your temptations, and so enter on the free, conquering life of Christ's good soldier, you will assuredly find yourself in that old iron slavery under the evil which you might have slain. If you want to have a free life, fight for it now. Or is there, perhaps, something between the two ? Yes, there may be. Because we would not wholly live for God ; because we would not give our first young strength to cut down certain faults of in- dulgence, or of temper, when with God's help we might have done it, He may condemn us to live and pine forty years in the wilderness outside the land — not indeed destroyed and cast away, because God's own mercy in Christ has pleaded for us, as Moses did that day for Israel, but still not admitted to the freedom, and the wealth, and the nearness to God, of those whom He has brought into their own land. — Bishop Talbot, Sermons Preached in the Leeds Parish Church, 1889-95, p. 136. References.— XIII. 31.— T. G. Selby, The God of the Patriarchs, p. 237. XIII. 32. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 197. XIV. 1-10. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 340. XIV. 6, 7.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 197. XIV. 9. — D. J. Hiley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. 1896, p. 388. XIV. 11. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1498. ' Plain Sermons ' by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. v. p. 217. XIV. 13-19.— W. Binnie, Sermons, p. 106. XIV. 19.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 349. CALEB 'But My servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed Me fully,' etc. — Numbers xiv. 24. I. God's Testimony Concerning: Caleb. 1. He had another spirit with him. The con- trast is between the spirit which he cherished and (a) that of the spies who brought back a discourag- ing report ; (b) that of the people who were thereby roused to murmuring and rebellion. The spirit of Caleb was : — (i) A conciliatory spirit. ' Blessed are the peace- makers.' (ii) A cheerful spirit. 'All things work together for good,' etc. (iii) A prompt spirit. ' Let us go up at once.' (iv) A courageous spirit. He stood almost alone. (v) A trustful spirit. ' The Lord is with us.' 2. He followed the Lord fully. One of the greatest needs of the present age in the Church and in the world is thoroughness. (i) Only a thorough Christian is of much real service in the cause of Christ. (ii) Only a thorough Christian enters fully into the enjoyment which Christ's service affords. (iii) Only a thorough Christian will remain stead- fast in the hour of trial. II. The reward which God promised Caleb. — ' Him will I bring,' etc. 131 Vv. 10, 11. NUMBERS XX Ver. 12. It is useless to pretend to be indifferent to rewards. The promise was fulfilled at last. God has promised something better for us. Our hopes and expectations rest upon the Word of God. 'The Lord hath said.' — F. J. Austin, Seeds and Saplings, p. 62. References. — XIV. 24. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 538. XV. 18-21.— J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope, p. 241. XV. 27-31.— W. Bianie, Sermons, p. 187. XVI. 3.— W. C. E. New bolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice, p. 77. XVI. 8-10. — A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, part ii. p. 347. XVI. 9. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 634. C. New, The Baptism of the Spirit, p. 110. S. M. Taylor, The Choir Man's Ministry, S.P.C.K. Tracts, 1897-1904. XVI. 14.— W. L. Watkinson, The Fatal Barter, pp. 195-212. XVI. 41.— H. J. Wilmot- Buxton, Sunday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 330. XVI. 47, 48. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 341. XVIII. 7. — A. Mac- laren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 352. XVIII. 25, 32.— J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope, p. 241. XIX. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2495. XIX. 2, 3.— Ibid. vol. ix. No. 527. XX. 1-13.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 353. XX. 5.— W. Hay M. H. Aitken, The Highway of Holiness, p. 79. XX. 7-13.— K. Moody-Stuart, Light from the Holy Hills, p. 42. XX. 8.— S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 112. J. Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. v. p. 175. MOSES SMITES THE ROCK ' Hear now, ye rebels ; must we fetch you water out of the rock ? And Moses lifted up his hand and smote the rock twice.' — Numbers xx. io, ii. I. It is a memorable incident in the Jews' history, and it is rich in warning to us at this day. What, you will ask, had Moses done, that he should be so sorely punished ? He had failed in his duty towards God ; and that in three particulars. (1) He had failed in strict obedience ; God had bid him ' speak to the rock,' and he had smitten it, smitten it twice. (2) He had shown temper, used hard language, ' Hear now, ye rebels '. (3) He had taken to himself the credit of supplying the Israelites with water. ' Must we fetch water for you out of the rock.' II. It is a standing admonition to us, (1) not to depart in the least jot or tittle from any law of God. (2) The immense importance attached to temperate speech ; the necessity of keeping a check on temper, and not letting ourselves be moved, however we may be provoked, to hot and angry words. It is very noticeable how still our Lord was under provocation ; when reviled, He reviled not again ; He was never pushed by the taunt of His enemies to hasty, angry reply. The want of self-control was visited — very heavily visited — upon Moses, and upon ' Aaron the saint of the Lordl'. Because of it, they were shut out of Canaan. III. The scene at the„rock at Meribah is further useful as carrying our thoughts upwards to Him Who is the source of all our hopes, the nourishment of our soul, the very life of our religion — even the Lord Jesus Christ. The rock in the desert was but a type and shadow ; the reality it typified is represented in Jesus Christ. Just as the water in the desert kept those six hundred thousand Israelites alive, so does the water which Christ has to give — which He offers freely and without price to all — serve to the comfort of unnumbered souls, to the cleansing, refreshing and sustaining, and the saving them from everlasting death. — R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 100. Reference.— XX. 10.— R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 166. THE SIN OF MOSES ' Because ye believed Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congrega- tion into the land which I have given them.' — Numbers XX. 12. The life of Moses was so remarkable, his difficulties so great, his patience so terribly tried, his time of service so long, and his fidelity so staunch throughout the whole of those forty years that it does seem sad to find him, when veiy near the end of his work, cut off from the enjoyment of that land of promise to which, from the beginning, he had been leading his people. One thing, however, it is important to observe, viz. that it affected only his enjoyment of Canaan, and left his soul perfectly safe. We know this be- cause 1500 years afterwards he was seen, with Elias, conversing with the Lord Jesus at the Transfigura- tion. What was the cause of his rejection ? He was directed not to smite the rock as on a previous occasion, but to speak. The direction was (v. 8), ' Speak ye unto the rock before their eyes '. Moses was to bring forth water for the people, but the instrument was to be not a blow but a word. How often we observe that a soft word will accom- plish more than the hardest blow ! But with this Moses does not appear to have been satisfied. He doubtless remembered how successfully he had smitten the rock in Rephidim, so he would do the same again, and, after using some very intemperate language to the people, he ' lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice' (v. 11). Such, then, were the facts, and some people may say that it did not much matter whether he smote the rock or spoke to it, especially as the people got the water, so that nobody suffered. But it did matter supremely, and was the one cause why Moses never crossed the Jordan. What, then, was the sin ? I. There was Disobedience. — We do not know his motive. Some people think he lost his temper, and acted hastily as an angry man. Some think it was simple carelessness — that he was worried and vexed, and did not trouble himself to attend to the directions given him by God. He may have used those three words that have proved so fatal to many a noble enterprise, ' It will do '. At all events God told him to do one thing, and he went straight off and did another. He that was the great lawgiver, and the great uph61der of law amongst the people of God ; he, for some cause best known to himself, in the 132 Ver. 4. NUMBERS XXI Ver. 4. face of all the people, disobeyed. Surely it was high time that God should vindicate His own authority, and let even Moses leam that, whatever men may think of it, disobedience is sin ? II. It was an Act of Unbelief. — Disobedience and unbelief are continually linked together. Unbelief leads to disobedience, and disobedience strengthens unbelief. So unbelief is the sin especially mentioned in this v. 12 : ' Because ye believed Me not '. Man could see the act of disobedience, but God saw the root of unbelief from which it sprang. III. It Hindered God's Purposes. — Moses was a typical character, and what he was directed to do was typical. We are taught by St. Paul (1 Cor. x. 4) that this very transaction was a type. ' They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.' There was a most important type both in the smiting of the rock and in the speaking to it. The rock gave forth no water till it was smitten, for it was necessary that our blessed Saviour should be ' smitten of God ' before the water of life could flow through Him to His people. Then, again, the rock, when once smitten, required no second blow, for the first was sufficient ; and after that blow was once given all that was required was that Moses should speak. Have we not here a wonderful type of the work of our blessed Saviour ? When He died on that Cross He ' was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities '. But when He had once made that full, perfect, and complete satisfac- tion for sin there remained no more place for a fresh sacrifice. References. — XX. 12. — W. H. Hutchings, Sermon-Sketches, p. 122. A. G. Mortimer, The Church' 's Lessons for the Christian Year, part ii. p. 361. XX. 23-29.— K. Moody-Stuart, Light from the Holy Hills, p. 50. XX. 27, 28.— H. P. Liddon, Ser- mons on Old Testament Subjects, p. 51. DISCOURAGEMENT ' And they journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom : and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.' — Num- bers xxi. 4. I. Discouragement is a cause of failure. What are its causes ? 1. It may be a result of bodily weakness. The better heart you can keep, the better your strength and health is like to be. 2. Modesty and earnestness. There are people to whom modesty, or what looks like it, may become a snare. Remember that pure modesty and simple earnest- ness will not cause discouragement. There must be dross in them in order to do that. Modesty, know- ing itself little, will be prepared to do what is little, and earnestness will be keen to do the little well. 3. The great cause of discouragement is pride. It may hide behind modesty or earnestness, or mix itself up with these ; but there it generally is. We are apt to forget that it is one and the, same sort of heart which is vain of being in front, or mortified at being behind. Is it not that you could do a little, but wanted to do much ? You thought you could be good in a hurry, and are not content to plod along ? Or you thought you were fully ready for the joys and blessings of a Christian ; his sure trust, his comforts in trouble, his stay of faith, his delight in God, and his pleasure in God's worship. And behold you get a little way, and you find it all disappointing. Like the men of Israel in the wilderness, you say, ' Our soul loatheth this light bread '. And you do not see that what discourages you is really, if you take it patiently and humbly, a sign that you are getting on. Egypt with its leeks and its onions, those coarse things you relished once, is left behind, and you are on the way to the heavenly country, if only you will not throw up, if only you will persevere. 4. Double-mindedness. — When one sways back- wards and forwards between serving God and pleasing one's self, between doing right out and out or letting it go and doing wrong, no wonder we get discouraged. 5. Indolence. — How much discouragement, grumb- ling, and downheartedness come simply from being ' weary in well-doing,' and giving in to the weariness. II. The means by which we may be saved from this great danger of discouragement. The promise of God's most ready and kind forgive- ness, if we have got far wrong, and begin, although feebly, to work backwards towards Him ; the promise of God's sufficient grace, and of His mercy still going with us, although we keep stumbling, so long only as we do not stop or go back, but struggle on ; the promise for those who have long served God, that He will never leave them, that He will complete the good work which He has begun, that discouragement is only another trial through which they may be schooled for Him. The whole aim of God's work for us is to bring us to joy. It is a bold saying of Mr. Ruskin, that the only duty which God's creatures owe to Him, and the only service they can render to Him, is to be happy. But it is deeply true ; it echoes the Apostle's words, 'Rejoice alway'. III. Whatever there is in us of the things which make man's answer to God, of faith, hope, and love, goes to drive out discouragement, with its clouded thoughts and cold, spiritless distrust. But there are special helps. 1. The experience of God's people. 2. If you steadily use your Bible, you will find there is no help like it against discouragement, just be- cause it shows you so tenderly that you are not alone in bearing its burdens and fighting against its danger. 3. Only, to take this comfort and to stand in this hope, there must be humility. We must be humble enough to tarry, if God will ; to bear what we de- serve ; to turn the murmurings of discouragement into the words of true repentance. 4. There is the great help of prayer : prayer in that largest sense in which it includes the praise, by which we tell over those great acts of God, or those glories of His Being, which are the ground of our hope. — Bishop Talbot, Sermons Preached in the Leeds Parish Church, 1889-95, p. 15. 138 Ver. 9. NUMBERS XXI Vv. 16-18. References. — XXI. 4, 5. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sun- day Lessons for Daily Life, p. 344. XXI. 4-9. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1722. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, p. 362. XXI. 8. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 285. THE BRAZEN SERPENT 1 It came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.'— Numbers xxi. g. In the history of the wandering, we recognize in Jehovah not merely the bountiful Lord Who supplies His people's wants, but the skilful and merciful Physician Who heals His people's diseases. In both capacities alike He demands adoration, He deserves gratitude, He justifies confidence. 1. A Spiritual Malady. — 1. A poisonous malady. The serpent's bite is in its virulence symbolical of sin. 2. A destructive malady. As the serpent's bite was death-dealing, so sin destroys the moral nature and the eternal prospects of men. 3. A widespread malady. The serpents committed devastation throughout the camp of Israel. There is no region inhabited by mankind where the mis- chievous and disastrous effects of sin are not known. II. A Divine Remedy. — Our Lord Himself has authorized the parallel between the serpent of brass and the crucified Redeemer. 1. Observe the participation of the Saviour in the nature of those He came to save. As the healing object was in the form of the destroyer, so Christ, Who knew no sin, became sin for us. 2. Observe the publicity of the remedy. The brazen serpent was reared on a banner-staff and set on high, and in like manner Christ was lifted up to draw all men unto Himself. III. The Means of Salvation. — As they who looked towards the serpent of brass received healing and life, even so those who direct the gaze of faith to the crucified Redeemer of the world experience His heal- ing virtue. IV. Spiritual Recovery. — The healing of the obedient Israelites seems to have been both instan- taneous and complete. And we are assured that ' as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever be- lieveth in Him should not perish,buthaveerand. This is a kind of authority which begets love and thankfulness. God never shows me His power merely for the sake jof inspiring me with awe. When I see the universe I see the suppression of His al- mightiness, not its extent, not its. abundance. God has given me a memory short and shadowed. He could have turned it into a daily plague by the mul- titude of His commandments and requirements ; He gives me ten, it is enough ; by and by He will shorten them to one. Here is the authority of gentleness, authority limited to my condition, stooping to my capacity. II. What marvellous commandments these are when looked at in their simplicity. They are ten speeches to little children. These are not command- ments for the manhood of the world, but for its child- 150 Vv. 22-33. DEUTERONOMY V Ver. 27. age. ' He added no more.' It was beautiful in its tenderness, it was Divine in its pathos. The com- mandments are not abolished, they are fulfilled, glorified, carried up their highest interpretation and most beneficent meanings. Jesus Christ said, ' Think not that I am come to destroy, I am not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it,' to carry it on to its higher meanings. Now how does He deliver the Ten Commandments ? ' Thou shalt not steal ' becomes ' If you would like to steal, you have stolen '. He digs down the outer wall and searches into the chambers of imagery and there, on the walls around, are seen symbols and images and faces and pantomimes of evil that the heart does and that the life would like to do. So we who are in Christ are not under the law, and yet we are under the law as Israel never was. Jesus Christ has given one commandment — will it be easier to keep one than ten. ' A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another,' and we must all confess ' I count not myself to have attained, but press towards the mark '. III. How easy for Christ to lay down the law. No, He did not lay it down ; He did it. He became obedient unto death, even the Cross-death, that He might redeem us. ' By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples,' — not if you utter the same theologi- cal Shibboleth, but by this ' if ye have love one to another '. Love is the highest exposition, love is the profoundest criticism, of Christianity. Love repeats the cross and sets the crown above its bleeding head. — J. Pulsford, The Clerical Library, vol. n. p. 49. Reference. — V. 22. — J. Oswald Dykes, The Law of the Ten Words, p. 1, Moses as mediator. — Deuteronomy v. 22-33. ' This representation of Moses,' says Prof. Harper, ' is not accidental. It is in complete accord with a characteristic of Israelite literature from beginning to end. In the earliest historical records we find that the chief heroes of the nation are mediators, standing for God in the face of evil men, and pleading with God for men when they are broken and penitent, or even when they are only terrified and restrained by the terror of the Lord. At the beginning of the national history we see the noble figure of Abraham in an agony of supplication and entreaty before God on behalf or the cities of the plain. At the end of it, we see the Christ, the Supreme Mediator between God and man, pouring out His soul unto death for men " while they were yet sinners," dying, the just for the unjust, taking upon Himself the responsibility for the sin of man, and refusing to let him wander away into permanent separation from God.' HEARING FOR OTHERS ' Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say : and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee ; and we will hear it, and do it.' — Deuter- onomy v. 27. ' Go thou near, and hear for us.' That is an old and still abiding plea. It is born of an old and still abid- ing necessity. It has been the cry of the human heart in all ages in its endeavours to find God and worship Him and leam His will. As we look at Moses standing in the lurid shadow of the mountain that might not be touched, standing and listening in the place of thunder — whilst the people waited afar off not daring to draw nigh, we can see, if we will, not an incident of ancient history about which cer- tain critical minds can grow brilliantly sceptical, but a great fact, too deeply grounded in human experi- ence for any wise soul to doubt it. I mean the ever personal and persistent need for mediation. God speaks to men through men. We are in this world, all resonant with His voice, to hear not only for ourselves but also for other people. Now hearing for other people suggests a task which some find by no means unpleasant or difficult, indeed a task to which they address themselves with enthusiasm and delight. ' Hearing for other people ' sometimes means dodging the truth with a fervent hope that it will hit some one else. It means becoming an expert in so receiving the shafts of rebuke or warning coming straight for your own conscience that they glance harmlessly aside and bury themselves in your neigh- bour's conscience. It is the subtle art of misapplica- tion. And it is essentially unprofitable. The gains thereof are a heart of pride and a starved soul. There is not one of us but can ill afford to miss one of those life-enriching pains God sends to teachable and listening souls. I. But there is a way of hearing for other people that is wholly meet and right, and that plays a neces- sary part in the religious education of the race. Think for a moment of music. It is a mediated treasure. There are a few great names, and we call them the masters. I think we might call them the listeners. They heard for duller ears the choral har- mony that is wherever God is. Did the great poets fashion their poems out of their own vibrant and sensitive souls? If we could ask them I think they would say ' No, we heard these things '. The musician and the poet have been men with ears to hear. The music of the ' Messiah ' was waiting for Handel, the message of the hills and vales of Cumberland was waiting for Wordsworth. And through them he may hear who will. II. Most people consider originality a very desir- able thing. Strange to say, however, people often think that the short cut to originality is found by copying some one else. The attempt to be original invariably defeats itself. Yet originality is a very precious thing. It is worth a great deal to the world. And the one thing that truly develops and safeguards it in human life is the worshipping and the listening spirit. The most original man is the most devout man. The freshest thing any man can give to the world — the one thing the world can never have un- less he does give it — is the word of God spoken in his own soul — the transcript of his personal experience of divinity. The hardest task a man can have in this world is to find himself. Indeed no man can make that all-important discovery unless God guides him to it 151 Ver. 4. DEUTERONOMY VI Ver. 7. III. The word that is given to a man thus is an authoritative word. The children of Israel said to Moses, Tell us what God shall say to you ; and we will hear it, and do it. How did they know it would be God's word he would bring back to them, since they would not be present at that awful communion ? Whence this readiness of theirs to obey a word not yet spoken ? They knew that in this matter decep- tion was impossible. A man can fashion many de- ceits, but he cannot speak God's word until he has heard it. It does not take a spiritual expert to detect a sham divinity. There is an instinct in the human heart that can always tell how far a word has travelled. Men can always tell whether your life message is an echo of the temporalities — a word picked up in the valley of time — or whether it has come through your hearts listening to the voice of the Eternal. — P. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church. p. 117. References.— V. 29. — R. D. B. Rawnsley, A Course of Ser- mons for the Christian Year, p. 209. V. 31. — J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p. 182. THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF DEUTER- ONOMY 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.'— Deuteronomy vi. 4. The book which lies before us is, in many ways, the most interesting and impressive of the Pentateuch. The message that this book brings us, coming as it does after the book of Numbers, is a most essential one. Numbers told us of the arrest in the deliver- ance of the nation ; of the thirty-seven years of wandering sent as the punishment of unbelief. But it told us also how the people were brought back to obedience, and were made ready to go into and possess the land. Could anything be more fitting than that, ere they actually entered on the work, the great law- giver should recapitulate in their hearing that law, in obedience to which lay their only hope of blessing ? I. First we have the laws which concern religion. These enjoined that only at one central sanctuary should offerings be offered. Further, all idol prophets, all who entice to idolatry, are to be destroyed, and all idolatrous practices utterly renounced. The dis- tinction between clean and unclean animals is to be observed in the matter of food, tithes are to be paid, and the year of release and the feasts of the law are to be duly celebrated. II. Next comes a section of laws regulating the conduct of the government and the executive. These laws define the authority of the judges and the judi- cial functions of the priests. They prescribe the method of demonstration in the courts of justice, they regulate the authority of the King, and exhibit the place that he is to fill in the Theocracy. They determine the position and privileges of the priests and Levites as members of the nation, and point the procedure to be followed in the case of the man- slayer who flies to one of the cities of refuge. This section concludes with the chapter devoted to the laws of war, whether waged against nations generally, or specially against the inhabitants of the land. III. From laws affecting public personages the writer passes to deal with the laws concerning the private and social life of the people. The discourse as a whole is a very remarkable one, and fitted to re- buke those who speak disparagingly of the Old Testa- ment. Deuteronomy being a recapitulation of the law, and, in a certain sense, the summary of the pre- ceding books, we might expect to find emphasized in it the lessons of those books ; and this we do find. The Divine holiness implying national holiness, which is the theme of Leviticus, is kept constantly in view in the book before us, and this holiness is constantly held up before the people as the standard which is to determine their conduct ever in matters secular. The book was spoken to the people as they were ready to enter the land, to fill them with enthusiasm to obey the Lord, and it was fitted to do this. For it spoke of the land which was to be possessed, and of the law as a law to be obeyed in the land. There is much retrospect in the book, but the main outlook of it is forward. — G. H. C. Macgregor, Message of the Old Testament, p. 59. ' Hear, O Israel : the Lord our God is one Lord.' — Deuter- onomy vi. 4. On this verse Prof. Harper observes : ' The worship at the High Places had led, doubtless, to belief in a multitude of local Yahvehs, who in some obscure way were yet regarded as one, just as the multitudin- ous shrines of the Virgin in Romanist lands lead to the adoration of our Lady of Lourdes, our Lady of Etaples, and so on, though the Church knows only one Virgin Mother. This incipient and unconscious polytheism it was our author's purpose to root out by his law of one altar; and it seems congruous, therefore, that he should sum up the first table of the Decalogue in such a way as to bring out its opposition to this great evil.' References. — VI. — A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons, vol. ii. p. 398. J. Johns, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 354. J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons, p. 123 ; The Law of the Ten Words, p. 35. J. Vaughan, Sermons (10th Series), p. 6. VI. 4, 5. — J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 25. VI. 6, 7. — E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 369. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches, p. 140. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 254. VI. 6. — M. Briggs, Practi- cal Sermons on Old Testament Subjects, p. 125. ' Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children,' etc.— Deuteronomy vi. 7, On the religious education contemplated in this passage, Prof. Harper says : ' To compensate for the restrictions which the Decalogue puts upon the natural impulses, Yahveh was to be held up to every child as an object of love, no desire after which could be excessive. Love to Yahveh, drawn out by what He had shown Himself to be, was to turn the energies of the young soul outward, away from self, and direct them to God, Who works and is the sum of all good. Obviously those upon whom such education had its perfect work would never be fettered by the material 152 Ver. 12. DEUTERONOMY VL VII Ver. 9. aspects of things. Their horizon could never be so darkened that the twilight gods worshipped by the Canaanites should seem to them more than dim and vanishing shadows. Every evil, incident to their circumstances as conquerors, would fall innocuous at their feet.' Reference. — VI. 10-12. — Archbishop Benson, Sermons Preached in Wellington College Chapel, p. 1. THE LAMP OF MEMORY ' Beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.'— Deuteronomy vi. 12. Dr. Johnson defined a patriot as ' one whose ruling passion is a love for his native country '. Jesus Christ showed Himself to be a profound patriot, and the Old Testament, which was His Bible, is the most patriotic book in the world. I. The gift of memory is a strange and mysterious power which holds its seat in the very fortress and citadel of the inward man. We are persons, because we can remember. We English are anxiously un- mindful of our own national past, though few people ever had such a past to be proud of and thankful for. Each green battlefield where English liberty was won, each crumbling castle and cathedral on English soil, is preaching its silent sermon, warning us, and teaching us how much God has done for us, and for our fathers. II. ' The sense of greatness keeps a nation great.' Mr. William Watson's line comes true if ' greatness ' be the greatness of our calling and election in God's will, of our high privileges by God's grace, of our sacred charge and duty to be the standard-bearers of liberty and mercy and truth in the world. But if the sense of greatness only inflates us with a conceit of ourselves and contempt for other peoples, if we use our privileges selfishly and recklessly, and boast our- selves like Nebuchadnezzar over our imperial state and power — then England's decay and downfall have begun already. For that insolent temper in any nation has its root in rottenness and its blossom in the dust.— T. H. Darlow, The Upward Calling, p. 70. References.— VI. 16.— H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2178. VII. 2.— M. Biggs, Practical Sermons on Old Testament Subjects, p. 134. VII. 2-4.— T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 24. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Bay, p. 192. GROWING GREAT IDEAS 'A thousand generations.'— Deuteronomy vii. 9. How to begin to teach the supreme ideas of time and space, and God and heaven, and eternity; that is the subject. We are familiar with these great words, so familiar indeed with them that we think nothing about them. We thus ruin ourselves by reading religious books and going to religious services. Nothing so ruinous as going to church, if we do not go in the right spirit and with adequate intelligence of the meaning of the act. I know nothing so really bad for the soul as religion, if not rightly compre- hended and understood. I. For instance, how to introduce the great word Heaven in its spiritual and ideal sense. It is intro- duced, therefore, first of all in its material sense. The Lord makes a great canopy — oh, so azure blue, and so written over with cloud parables — and He says, We will call that heaven. It is no heaven, but that would do as a toy-word, and that would be an ex- cellent beginning in object-teaching. Said the Lord God Almighty in effect, This great space with all its great poem of light we will call heaven. It was not heaven as we understand the word now, but it would not have done to have introduced the truly spiritual heaven all at once. The Lord is a wise Father- Mother, so He begins with nouns and objects and shining lights and glittering points that want to show their bigness, but distance will not allow them. There is a lesson to us poor preachers. We begin by thrusting eternity upon the attention of the people all at once. We should promise them some- thing less but something typical, something that carries a parable in its heart and whose lips are warm with a poem. But we expect to get the people to understand the Trinity in one morning sermon. II. How difficult it was for God to get the idea of philanthropy into the minds of the people ! Phil- anthropy means love of man, love of human nature because it is human nature, and being human nature is allied to the Divine and all-redeeming personality of God. Did the Lord begin by telling the people to love everybody ? He did not, He ignored ' every- body,' and fixed the attention of the people upon themselves and their wives and families and their tribes and their nation ; and then the Lord dropped a word about another section of humanity. He said, You will now and then come upon the 'stranger'. That is a new word ; we know ourselves and our households and the tribe to which we belong, but if we see a stranger we will slay him. Thus the Lord created an opportunity for Himself: He said, If you see a stranger, invite him into your house ; he may be tired on his journey, let him sit down at least outside your door ; the stranger may happen to come to you at sundown, at the preparation before the Sabbath ; you will not think of allowing the poor wayfarer to go out on the Sabbath Day, you will therefore have a stranger within your gates and you must treat him as if he were one of the family. What a subtle method of proceeding ; how remote the point of approach, yet how direct and sure! Thus the great Christianizing, which is also the great fraternizing, policy proceeded and expanded until it does seem now and then — with sad and terrible exceptions, which I trust are only momentary — as if the angel song would become the true song of the nations — ' Peace on earth ; goodwill toward men,' — goodwilling about one another, speeches in the parliament of man about benevolence and mutual trust. III. Now we come to the third point of starting, which is the point of the text — 'a thousand genera- tions '. What is the Lord intending to teach now ? 153 Ver. 9. DEUTERONOMY VI L, VIII Ver. 2. He has taught what the people can receive about a generation ; in fact they have lived through a genera- tion, they know that word very well, it is quite a simple word in their vernacular ; a generation may be thirty years or thirty centuries, or whatever it is or whatever it was, it was a unit which could be in some sense realized by the people to whom the words were addressed. But God means more than this, and how can He begin to say what He means ? If He said ' immortality ' nobody would understand what He was talking about at that time of the world's history and at that period of spiritual vision. So the Lord met the people where they could meet Him ; He stooped to their infancy, He spake their one-syllabled language. Having got the people to say that they knew the meaning of a generation, He proceeded thus ; then two generations, then three generations, and the children smiled incredulously ; four generations, then reason began to totter. There is a wonderful division of the generations ; they now come before us in groups — fourteen generations, and fourteen generations, and fourteen generations — what is this? Thus the Lord introduced the notion of immortality, for ever and ever and ever ; and at length the grand revelation was made that Christ brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel ; so we do not talk about a generation in heaven but about God's for ever in the skies. We take the wrong way of reaching people ; we begin with im- mortality, and nobody understands the word. That is a word into the full meaning of which we must giow. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. iv. p. 78. DOES GOD HAVE FAIR PLAY? * Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God.' — Deuteronomy vn. g. It is the declaration of the Scriptures from beginning to end that the Lord our God is a faithful God. Has God been faithful to us ; and if so, are we justi- fied in assuming that the same faithfulness is the ex- perience of others ? I. Christ does not pledge the Divine faithfulness to our desires — it is pledged to our needs. The purpose of God in us is character, and once we have it, estab- lished in Divine grace and ensphered in the human will of a sufficient number of us, we shall soon make our new and better world. Without this character we may hope for nothing. With it we need despair of nothing. To say that there are experiences in the lives of individuals, and even of communities, which we cannot explain, is no proof that the universe is immoral. II. Remember there are some things God cannot do for us and yet leave us men. He cannot make a better world without the consent of our individual obedience and the co-operation of our will. Instead of asking, how can God be God and permit wrong to be in the world, let us face the truth that wrong is in the world for this reason — that we permit it. God is faithful : therefore good must be possible. Evil is, as it were, embedded in our nature ; and for that we are not accountable. It is the greatness of the Christian religion that it not only tells us what it were good to do, but it offers to us the power to do it. III. We have to find out that we cannot serve two masters. However we fall short in practice, the in- tention must be all for God, or it will be none. Good- ness is possible ; and not to achieve it is to defeat the purpose for which we were born into this world. The iesson for us to learn is to labour and to wait ; to give God and ourselves space to work in. Let us trust the faithful God, and we shall be taught to regard the troubles that test, and the limitations that perplex us, as the agents of His Providence through the courses of time. — Ambrose Shepherd, Men in the Making, p. 245. References. — VII. 9, 10. — R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Ser- mons (2nd Series), p. 21. VII. 12, 13. — J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p. 375. VII. 20. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. p. 673. VII. 21. — F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 145. VII. 22. — C. Vince, The Unchanging Saviour, p. 292. VII. 22-26. — F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament. THE WAY IN THE WILDERNESS (First Sunday of the Year) ' Thou shalt consider all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee . . . in the wilderness.' — Deuteronomy viii. 2. (i) Let us emphasize the word all, for on that word the emphasis of the sentence truly lies. (ii) The character of the path to be estimated not by the present difficulty or danger, but by the impor- tance of the end. (iii) The infinite variety of the way. (iv) The beauty of the way. It is a goodly world which our God hath built and adorned for us, a world whose goodliness is ever around us. (v) The bread of the wilderness. This miracle of the manna is repeated every day before our eyes. (vi) The perils of the wilderness. Life is one long peril. (vii) The sins of the wilderness. The past is best buried under a nobler present. (viii) The chastisements of the way. (ix) The Elims of the way, the sunny spots, the living verdure, the murmuring fountains, the rustling, shadowing palms. (x) The end of the way. Each step the path will brighten as it nears the precincts of the Promised Land. — J. Baldwin Brown, Contemporary Pulpit vol. vi. p. 371. References. — VIII. 2. — D. Burns, Christian World Pulpit, 1890, p. 88. John Mason, Lord's Day Entertainments, vol. ii. p. 297. Bradley, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 284. E. M. Goulburn, Sermons, p. 485. Simeon, Works, vol. ii. p. 299. John Venn, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 397. T. Binney, Sermons (1st Series), p. 362. Kingsley, Discipline, p. 40. A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry (1st Series), p. 151. Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv. pp. 397 and 417. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading, p. 84. J. Vaughan, Sermons (14th Series), p. 156. A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry (1st Series), p. 151. VIII. 154 Ver. 12. DEUTERONOMY X., XII Ver. 13. 2, 3.— C. M. Betts, Eight Sermons, p. 01. VIII. 3.— J. W. Walker, A Book of Lay Sermons, p. 133. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 418. VIII. 10, 11.— G. A. Sowter, Sowing and Reaping, p. 84. VIII. 11-18. — C. Kingsley, Gospel of the Pentateuch, p. 197. VIII. 15. — J. M. Neale, Readings for the Aged (4th Series), p. 175 ; ibid. Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 330. IX. 1. — T. Arnold, Christian Life, vol. v. p. 305. IX. 0. — Bishop Goodwin, Parish Sermons (5th Series), p. 78. IX. 20-29.— F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 53. IX. 29. — -Bishop Lightfoot, Contem- porary Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 03. T. Arnold, Christian Life, p. 305. THE TEST OF NATIONAL PROSPERITY ' And now, Israel, what doth the Lord require of thee ? ' — Deuteronomy x. 12. The Old Testament is concerned with tribes and nations rather than with individuals. The Law of Moses deals with Israel collectively as a whole. The prophets utter their burdens of doom not against evil persons, but against wicked kingdoms like Babylon, and Moab, and Egypt, and their great messages of hope and warning and consolation are addressed to Judah or Jerusalem rather than any single Jew. In this sense it is true that no Scripture is merely of pri- vate interpretation. Redemption includes the race, or else it could not embrace the individual. The Gos- pel claims all mankind just as definitely as it appeals to you and me. I. Recently Englishmen have been stirred up to dis- cuss with new eagerness the problem of our national prosperity. Are we really prosperous ? How can we safeguard and develop our mercantile success ? What is the secret of its continuance and its expansion ? The air is thick with controversy over such questions as these. Yet the answers given are confined for the most part to material considerations. At such a time we need more than ever to remind ourselves how the Bible tests and measures prosperity. If the Old Testament applies to individuals as well as to nations, the New Testament is true for nations as well as for individuals. A nation's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which it possesseth, nor in the extent of the empire which it rules. What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul. II. Let us be very certain that personal vices, how- ever common and popular they become, can never be transmuted into public virtues. The same conduct which ruins an individual will in the long run wreck a state. To oppress and plunder the poor is equally accursed, whether it be perpetrated by a crowned tyrant, or carried out quietly under legal forms by a trust or a syndicate, a trade corporation or a vested interest. III. The seal of a people's unity is a sense of the Divine calling and election. It remains true in Eng- land, as it was in Israel, that a covenant with God is the one sure ground of all covenants between man and man. National sincerity and veracity are bred in a people in proportion as they recognize the judgments and the mercies of the God of truth. National loyalty depends at last on common faithfulness to our im- mortal and invisible King. ward Calling, p. 220. -T. H. Darlow, The Up- GOD'S REQUIREMENTS Deuteronomy x. 12. The vastness of God's requirements makes the despair of the morning of the Christian life, but it is the sure hope of its noon. Had He required less, this life could not be eternal. ' It is a prejudicial but too common error among Christians,' said Pascal, in a letter to Madame Perier, ' and even among those who make a profession of piety, to believe that there is a measure of perfection sufficient for safety, beyond which it is not necessary to aspire. It is an absolute evil to stop at any such point, and we shall assuredly fall below it if we aim not to advance higher and higher.' References. — X. 12. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Les- sons for Daily Life, p. 70. X. 14-10. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 303. X. 10. — J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas to Epiphany, p. 193. XI. 10-12.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 58. XI. 12. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. p. 728. XI. 18. — Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2580. XI. 19.— T. Arnold, Ser- mons, vol. iii. p. 131. XI. 21. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 320. XI. 20-28.— J. S. Boone, Sermons, p. 155. XII. 8, 9. — Sermons for Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday, p. 53. THE FRIENDSHIP OF CHRIST (A University Sermon) ' Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest.' — Deuteronomy xn. 13. ' Behold, I stand at the door and knock.' — Revelation hi. 20. Youe college days are pre-eminently days when you open the doors of your hearts and let new friends in. In these years you are generous, and ready to hear a knock, and to respond to it. I. Never has the history of any human life been truly and fully related. I fancy that if such a thing could be, the record would be mainly of those who at different stages and periods have come into it. Many of them have come and gone, but some have remained. To let another human being into your life means far more than you can possibly imagine now. Let us consider what a true friendship means and how blessed it is. (a) First of all, there is in a true friendship a com- plete and joyous frankness. We go about disguised. Most of our intercourse with fellow-beings is alto- gether on the surface. In a true friendship all that we have dealt with in the outer court we take as ended. There the veils are torn ; we are heart to heart. (b) A true friendship means also sympathy and tenderness. In its high estate it fears nothing from life or even from death. The friends who are together in the class-room to-day are going out to their en- counter with the world, and in that one may succeed and the other may fail. But it is not upon the hazards of fortune that a true friendship turns. A true friendship is to be for solace and for cheer in all the relations and passages of life and death. (c) Also a true friendship is an education in trust, 155 Vv. 13-17. DEUTERONOMY XVI., XVIII Vv. 9-22. in magnanimity. Great friendships are not to be broken on mere suspicion. They are not even to be broken by fault, for all of us err. There is something in a high friendship which survives all that, and if life is a lesson in magnanimity, we shall learn it best from the dearest and noblest of our friends. This friendship cannot be broken by death. II. But as Emerson says, true friendship demands a religious treatment. We are not to strike links of friendship with cheap persons where no friendship is. We are not to offer our burnt offerings in every place we see. III. Whoever comes or goes, there is one Friend who continually knocks at the door of our hearts, and His friendship is all-sufficing. There are many who even in the crowd are lonely and loveless. It was for them that Christ died. It is their love that Christ is seeking. Remember that no one who has let Christ into his life ever repented of it. IV. There is no such great mystery about conver- sion. You know already what it is to let some human being enter into your life. Everything is changed by it more or less. What could be better, happier, wiser for you than to open the door to this Seeker, this Knocker, this Beseecher ? Let him in. Say to Him, say it to Him now in the silence of your souls, Come in Thou Blessed of the Lord : why standest Thou without? — W. Robertson Nicoll, The British Weekly, vol. xlv. p. 353. Deuteronomy xn. 13. — Exposition of this verse in Mark Rutherford's Revolution in Tanner's Lane, chap. xxiv. References. — XIII. 1-3. — F. D. Maurice, Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, p. 274. XIII. 11. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iv. p. 29. XIV. 21.— R. F. Horton, The Hidden God, p. 65. C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays, p. 138. XV. 11. — J. Keble, Miscellaneous Sermons, p. 41. J. M. Neale, Sermons on the Prophets, vol. ii. p. 218. XV. 15. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1406. XVI. 1. — C. S. Robinson, Simon Peter, p. 53. E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv. p. 120. XII. 2. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons, vol. i. p. 416. THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES (A Harvest Sermon) ' Thou shaJt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine ; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee.' — Deu- teronomy xvi. 13-17. The three great feasts of Israel — -the Passover, the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, and the Feast of Taber- nacles— were not only commemorative of national blessings or prophetic of yet greater spiritual bles- sings to be bestowed, but they were conspicuously connected with the three great seasons of the tillage of Palestine — the barley and the wheat harvests and the vintage. This Feast of Tabernacles was the most joyous of them all. Above and beyond all other marks of joy and utterances of thanksgiving, the law laid stress on the thankofferings of love. Men were not to appear before the Lord empty. The law, ' Freely have ye received, freely give,' applies to the natural as well as to the spiritual life, and there can be no true fulfilment in the latter if it is neglected in the former. Harvest festivals are valuable in this age. I. They tell us of the truth which we are con- stantly tempted to forget — -that the God of grace is also the God of nature ; that the Son of God is also the Divine Word, the Eternal Wisdom, by whom all laws of nature are ordained ; that the Holy Ghost is also the Lord and giver of life, and that not only are all holy thoughts and desires His gifts, but that even the skill of the artist and the builder speak of a wisdom for all manner of workmanship which is His gift. Harvest thanksgivings help us to look out on the world of nature and of men with more large- hearted sympathies. II. They bear their witness that we believe that the laws of nature are the expression of an Almighty Father's will, and that we accept its workings, not with simple submission, but with thankfulness and trust. III. They bring us into fellowship with the old religious life of Israel. It adds to the interest with which we think of this feast, to remember that one large and important part of our Lord's teaching was connected with it. The history of one feast of Tabernacles occupies four chapters of St. John's Gospel. Its ritual was present to the eyes of men, and to His own thoughts, when He stood and cried, ' I am the Light of the world. If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.' — E. H. Plumptre, The Clerical Library, vol. 11. p. 51. References. — XVII. 16. — J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Par- ables, p. 217. W. M. Taylor, Contrary Winds, p. 93. The prophet like Moses. — Deuteronomy xvm. g-22. ' A Prophet.' How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet ? In the following passages our Lord claims prophetic powers : ' My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me'. 'Then shall ye know that I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father hath taught Me, I speak these things.' ' Like unto Moses.' Christ has the whole prophetic life in Himself, says a German writer. He has the pathos of an Isaiah, the melancholy of an Hosea, the meekness of a Jeremiah, the joy in nature of an Amos, the power of observation of the proverb-writers, the whole world of feeling of the Psalmists. In what particular respects, then, may we say that Christ was especially like unto Moses ? First, He was a mediator between God and the people. Second, He is a de- liverer from bondage as well as a revealer of God's will. Third, He was signally meek and supremely faithful. Note how often in the New Testament this pre- diction is applied to Jesus. Philip refers to it when he says to Nathanael, ' We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law did write'. Our Lord Himself doubtless had it in mind when He said, ' Moses wrote of Me'. Peter quoted it when preaching to the crowd who had gathered when the lame man was healed. Stephen, in his defence, cited it also. 156 Vv. 1-3. DEUTERONOMY XXII Ver. 8. References.— XVIII. 15. — E. H. Gifford, Twelve Lectures, p. 151. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. vii. p. 118. XVIII. 15-19. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1487. XIX. 5, 6. — E. M. Goulbum, Sermons in the Parish Church of Holywell, p. 101. XIX. 32.— J. N. Norton, Every Sunday, p. 249. XX. 2-4. — J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, p. 167. XX. 8.— W. Ray, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xi. p. 233. J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, p. 177. YOUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR BROTHER ' Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them : thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother.' — Deuteronomy xxh. 1-3. A recent writer in one of our religious papers has said, with all the omniscience and infallibility that attach to the press, that no one preaches from the Pentateuch in these days. By this he probably sug- gests that there is no Gospel in the Pentateuch, and in suggesting this he shows hopeless, unblushing ignorance. One of the best books Charles Kingsley wrote was The Gospel in the Pentateuch ; and any- one who takes the trouble to look for it will find that he cannot read a couple of pages of the Pentateuch without finding therein Gospel truth and teaching. Among many things that are stern and severe there is much that is tender and beautiful, much that breathes the spirit of Jesus. Notably there is tender and thoughtful care for weak things in nature, dumb creatures who serve men, and for children, for the outcast, the stranger, and the poor. There is also a great deal about brotherhood, enough I should think to satisfy the most ardent Socialist. The per- sonal responsibility of man for man is constantly insisted on, and this passage is an example of it, ' Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray,' etc. I. The teaching of this passage seems to me to be that we have a large share of responsibility for the wrongs which go on about us, and we are bound, even at cost and inconvenience to ourselves, to try to prevent and rectify them. Look at this picture again, and suppose that these cattle are being driven away. The man who sees it is bound to interfere. His interference may mean an altercation with the thief, it may mean that for some days he must find pasturage for his neighbour's sheep, it may mean a great deal of inconvenience and loss ; but this is the law of God, and from it there is no appeal. He is bound to do his best to right the wrong. II. The law obtains for us Christian people in the moral and spiritual realm. As a Christian man every- thing that concerns my brother should be a concern to me, even to his ox and ass and raiment, and I must, wherever possible, guard him against loss and damage. If I am to care for his ox and his ass, I am surely to care for his character. He will get over the loss of a sheep, but he will with difficulty recover a lost virtue. There are three classes of people which come up to one's view, as one thinks of words like these and gives them their largest interpretation. They may be re- presented here as — (i) The people who lead others astray and cause them loss, people who have wronged their brother. (ii) People who have iseen their brother wronged or suffering loss, and have hidden themselves ; who have deliberately refused to take any trouble or pains. (iii) The people who have suffered loss and who themselves are being led astray. — C. Beown, Light of Life, p. 151. THE HOUSE AND ITS BATTLEMENT ' When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.' — Deuteronomy xxii. 8. The natural exposition of the text is a very simple one. Eastern houses were built with flat roofs for obvious reasons. As it was a hot clime people were glad to get to the top of the house for fresh air, and there would be little children, thoughtless — compara- tively so — and if they were allowed at any time on the roof, where they would most likely wish to go, there would be a feeling of insecurity unless there was something to prevent a disaster. And so God in His infinite kindness, care, and thought for the welfare of the nation of Israel gives this special direc- tion to those who had the building of houses, that they should not overlook this mast necessary arrange- ment for safety, and build a parapet round the house that would prevent any one being placed in immediate peril, so that unless they presumptuously scaled that wall they would be as safe on the top as underneath. The gracious and eternal God, who in His conde- scension, care, and pity for fallen sinners, sees fit to make a law for their temporal safety, in building His spiritual house is none the less careful. I. The need of the battlement. (a) The house top in the East would be frequently used as a watch-tower. The children of Israel were ofttimes surrounded by invading hosts. Now there would be a special danger without the battlement. In their undue anxiety for their own safety, in watch- ing the on-coming foe they would most likely forget where they were, and in their excitement step right off and not know what they were doing. Here we have a spiritual lesson. What a difficulty it is to find that narrow pathway between a gracious and salutary solicitude for our safety and that undue anxiety which comes through seeing the strength of our enemies surrounding us. (b) The house-roof in the East would also be used as a place of relaxation, exercise, and recreation ; they would often repair there to view things proceeding around them in the ordinary way. Here we see the need of the parapet or battlement for safety. How this brings before us the dangers that surround the footsteps of the young. What a danger there is lest in spiritual glee and satisfaction they may tumble if there is not the battlement. (c) The house-roof in the East was frequently used as a place of repose and sleep. A battlement would be necessary to enable one to take pleasant repose. When God says ' I will cause my flock to lie down ' He means ' I will give them to realize such a feeling 157 Ver. 10. DEUTERONOMY XXV 1., XXVIII Ver. 67. of safety in My keeping, by strength and protection, that they shall be able to lie down comfortably '. II. This battlement was to be a component or essential part of the building of the house. And so it is in reference to the securing love and mercy and faithfulness of God, it is a part of His own structure and never can be removed. III. This battlement is to be used and not pre- sumptuously abused. We shall either be looking upon the security of God's people as an impetus to encourage us to remember His keeping power, to cause us to hope in His mercy notwithstanding the sense of our failure, and to put the hand of our trembling faith into the hand of His great love, or we shall be found among those who have presump- tuously climbed over God's restrictions. References. — XXII. 8. — C. Perren, Revival Sermons, p. 234. XXV. 4.— R. F. Horton, The Hidden God, p. 65. NATIONAL SAFEGUARDS ' Behold, I have brought the first-fruits of the land, which thou, O Lord, hast given me.' — Deuteronomy xxvi. io. Each young man takes an immense stride in experi- ence when he discovers that God has made him not only the member of a family but also the citizen of a nation. Gradually he comes to realize how much the word ' nation ' means. The earlier part of the Bible occupies itself not so much with individuals as with the fortunes of a chosen nation. We read in the Old Testament how God called and trained up and delivered and chastened and restored His people Israel. And these precepts in Deuteronomy xxvi. were given as safeguards to the nation after it had entered into possession of Canaan, and had become settled and peaceful and prosperous, for the real test and touchstone of any people or any individual are how they endure prosperity. The whole tenor of these verses implies that a people's security depends not on outward but on inward conditions. And hence we may infer what are those invincible powers which alone can garrison the heart of any nation. I. The first of these great guardian angels is re- verence for the nation's past. The previous chapter has recalled Israel's deliverance from Amalek, and ends with the warning words ' Thou shalt not forget '. And through the Old Testament God's warnings and promises and appeals are based on the actual facts of Hebrew history. That wonderful and glorious record must never fall out of mind. And it still remains true that a nation which ignores its history is like a man who has lost his memory. II. Hand in hand with such understanding comes a sense of the nation's election. God's calling and discipline had been manifest throughout the long generations of Israel. God Himself had chosen them and sealed them for His own high ends, and moulded them by the secret ' counsel of His will, and made them His witnesses and standard-bearers in the world. And on our land also God's finger has stamped a manifest and marvellous destiny which should needs make us humble and sober in proportion as we real- ize what it means. III. Beyond the sense of national responsibility there must also be gratitude for national blessings. If Israel could rejoice in every good thing which God had given them, we too are bound to praise Him for all His benefits to us. Young men and women who have never lived in less favoured lands fail to estimate the incalculable blessings of their own. IV. A nation's supreme safeguard lies in the dedi- cation of its youth. Those first-fruits laid on the ancient Jewish altar were but an allegory. And we fulfil the spirit of the ancient command only as we consecrate the flower and first-fruits of our own lives. — T. H. Dari.ow, The Upward Galling, p. 80. Reference. — XXVII. 15. — C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical, p. 464. A BLESSING ON THE STOREHOUSE ' The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy store- houses.'— Deuteronomy xxviii. 8. The storing of the grain is the last of the processes of harvest. We may therefore take the blessing of God upon the housed and winnowed corn as includ- ing His blessing upon all previous stages of growth or ingathering. I. The Sowing Time — This is where industry comes in, and the gift of God is seen also to be His reward and blessing upon human diligence. The preparation of the soil and the choice of the seed — application to human life. IL The Period of Growth, the Waiting Time.— With growth itself the farmer has nothing to do. It is the work of God, in which man has no part. But he has to weed and protect the crop. Carry the thoughts here suggested into the realm and province of life. III. The Gathering Time. — We are all gleaners in the harvest-field of life. What use have we made of the season which God has given us ? IV. The Testing, the Winnowing Time — for ' every man's work ' shall be tried ' of what sort it is '. Holy Scripture employs three figures to enforce and emphasize the strict and searching nature of this trial : — (a) The process of winnowing. (b) The process of the analyst. (c) The process of burning, the trial by fire. — Vivian R. Leonard, Harvest-tide, p. 101. Reference. — XXVIII. 67. — T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 32. THE DESIRED MORNING ' Would God it were morning! ' — Deuteronomy xxviii. 67. This cry is going up from all the earth in all languages, and sometimes unconsciously. The heart is one, the passion, the vehemence of life is expressive of a common humanity. In the first instance, all this refers to a great matter of punishment which the Lord was about to inflict upon His disobedient people. He would not leave them alone, night or day, He would make them feel the thong for every sin they had committed ; for 158 Ver. 67. DEUTERONOMY XXVII I., XXIX Ver. 29. every evil word and every evil deed there should be a lash as of a scorpion sting. ' Would God it were morning ! ' It is a great cry, the interpretation of the soul's dumb desire. The soul is weary, it is con- fused, confounded, perplexed, mocked, and the dark- ness itself becomes a whip wherewith the hand almighty scourges and chastises the soul. I. The text may be regarded as an aspiration, a hopeful and vehement desire. ' Would God it were morning ! ' That is the aspiration of a puzzled student, a most perplexed and bewildered thinker. He is drooping towards atheism, down to the low dank levels of dejection if not despair. Why so? ' Because,' he replies, ' things are so mysterious ; nothing ends in itself; the tuft of smoke has gone back to some primal fire ; and all things are so con- fused, intermingled, and so deeply and tragically en- gaged in internecine conflict ; and there is so much apparently needless suffering on this small s'lobe. II. This cry, 'Would God it were morning!' is occasioned by Sorrow, written with a large capital, as if it were personalized, turned into an eloquent but grim personality and figure. Yet how poor the world would be if all the books that Sorrow has written were taken out of it ! What if sorrow be but the broken clouds of a very sunny day, helping us to see better into the depths of the sky and to feel more sensitively the meaning of interpreting light ? III. This cry for the true morning is the expres- sion of struggling but hopeful faith. The soul can never give up that idea of the morning. Sometimes its grasp seems to be relaxed, but God will take care that the hope and promise, the sweet confidence of morning, shall not be taken out of the hand. Some- times we can feel ourselves growing in wisdom ; sometimes we are quite sure that we have made an advance upon yesterday. Now and again the old tone of confidence comes into the voice so long choked by tears and sobs, and takes part in some dropped hymn and makes it live again with the new- ness of its own life. These are mysteries, these are hopes and comforts ; these constitute the morning we have been sighing for. 1. This cry for the morning has been sustained by saintly histories. The answer to this aspiration is justified by saintly experience. Men have been delivered ; souls have been saved ; as a matter of fact, light has really and fully come, so that men have stood up when all other men seemed to be sitting down, and they have towered up to a great representative personality, and have said, ' This poor man cried unto the Lord, and the Lord answered him '. 2. The morning has come to many ; it may come to all. It has come to the grave. One bold sent- ence in the holy book is, ' He hath abolished death ! ' — expunged it, rubbed it out of the world's language ; there is no such word in any gruesome meaning now. The resurrection of Christ was the morning that came upon the death-land. Those who stand upon the Rock of Faith, upon the tomb of Christ emptied and angel-filled, are confident that the morning has come in some places and is coming in all places. — Joseph Paekee, City Temple Pulpit, vol. v. p. 194. Reference. — XXIX. 4. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1638. THE SECRET AND THE UNREVEALED THINGS 4 The secret things belong unto the Lord our God : but those things which are revealed belong unto us, and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. ' — Deuteronomy xxix. 29. Theee are some things respecting which we ought to be agnostics. They are the secret things which belong to God. There are other things concerning which we ought not to be agnostics. They are the revealed things which belong to us and to our children. I. The things which concern us, which touch our life, lie within the realm of our knowledge ; the things which do not touch us, which do not concern our life, concerning which we may hold one theory or another theory, and our life still remain right, do not belong to us. We may discuss them, but they are not part of the vital truths of religion. II. In a similar manner there is the known and the unknown in religion. And the difficulty about religious discussion has been that most of it has been fighting about the unknown. 'Nothing is more certain,' says Herbert Spencer, 'than that we are ever in the presence of an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed.' Now what can we know about that infinite and eternal Energy ? We say that He is omnipresent. But we do not know. All we know is that everywhere in the universe He is operative. III. But whenever God comes in touch with us, we do know. We know that there is a natural order in the universe ; we know that there is somewhere a rule ; and we know that these rules are absolute, un- changeable, immutable. We do not know in what way God operates on the mind. But we do know Christ's relation to us ; and that is enough for us to know. What God is in His essence we cannot know. What is His method of manifesting Himself to others we cannot know ; but we can open our hearts to His sunshine and receive His life. What the Christ is in His relation to the eternal Father we cannot know ; but to us He can be the model which we follow and the revelation of God whom we adore. — Lyman Abbott, Homiletic Review, 1904, vol. xlvui. p. 291. KNOWLEDGE: REVEALED AND SECRET ' The secret things belong unto the Lord our God : but those things which are revealed belong unto us, and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. ' — Deuteronomy xxix. 29. I will first of all take the two terms of my text and then the declaration of the purpose lying behind the truth of the terms — revealed things ; secret things. I. First, the revealed things. The Hebrew word very literally means things denuded, laid bare. I 159 DEUTERONOMY XXX Ver. 14. have said to you that a thing revealed cannot be perfect and complete ; but it is a revealed thought. This hymn-book, for example, is a thing revealed to us by this imperfect manner of words. It is the same thing in the moral world. There are things revealed and things I know — a flower, a storm, light and heat, and the mystery of pain, the great affirmations of Christian truth. II. Take the next term of the text : secret things. As the first word means things denuded, the second means things clothed, things hidden by a covering. The covering demonstrates the presence of the thing beneath. The covering is revealed, the thing is hidden. It is the intangible, impenetrable, illusive mystery that lurks at the back of everything revealed. I take up this book again. There is as much mystery in that hymn-book as there is in God. When you can fathom the mystery of this book, you can fathom the mystery of the universe. III. It is the great declaration of revealed religion that everything that baffles the human intellect and bewilders the human heart because of its mystery is not a mystery with God. He knows it thoroughly. Carry this idea into the second half of the declaration. Everything revealed is revealed for us and is united to the secret and hidden forces and expresses so much of them as is for us to know. The truth is that everything of which I am certain is but the apparition of a heavenly thing and teaches a spiritual truth. Take away the secret things and you will lose God. It is the secret of Divine government that demon- strates the fact of Divine government. — G. Campbell Morgan, Homiletic Review, 1904, vol. xlviii. p. 451. References. — XXIX. 29. — J. O. Davies, Sermons by Welsh- men, p. 59. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. i. p. 346. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 193. Loving and obeying God. — Deuteronomy xxx. ' The word is very nigh unto thee.' In one of his poems Lowell tells the story of an ancient prophet who made a pilgrimage into the wilderness until he reached Mount Sinai. God's presence had deserted him, and he thought that there, if anywhere, he should find it again. As he engaged in prayer on Sinai, expecting some strange and startling answer, the moss at his feet unfolded, and a violet showed itself through the moss. Then he remembered that just before he left home his little daughter had come running to him, offering him a nosegay of these very flowers. They grew at his own door ; he saw them day by day ; he had travelled all that distance for a message that had been very nigh unto him all the time. Love and Obedience (v. 15-20). A poor, half-witted girl suffering from arrested brain-development, was taken into a school opened by a group of benevolent ladies. The leader of the enterprise was known as Mistress Mary, and the forlorn girl loved her dearly. One day in San Francisco the half-witted scholar was in one of the upper storeys of a cheap clothing factory when fire broke out. To come back down the staircase was impossible. The crowd shouted to her to leap into a blanket that they held out. But she looked down and was petrified by fright, for she knew not the voice of strangers. At length Mistress Mary ap- peared. She cried in a clear, sweet voice, ' Leap, darling, leap ! ' And the half-paralysed child, re- cognizing the voice she loved, obeyed. She leaped, swooning as she fell through the air, but was saved. CHRIST'S NEARNESS TO HIS PEOPLE (.4 Christmas Sermon) ' The word'is very nigh.' — Deuteronomy xxx. 14. Our Lord was known by many titles — The Christ or Messiah, Jesus or Joshua the Saviour, the Lamb of God, the Vine, the Door, the Good Shepherd, the Son of Man, and many others. Perhaps no title is more fitting than the ' Word,' for He came to reveal God to man, to reveal the will and mind of the Father, just as a word spoken reveals the thought which gave it birth and being. And the Word is very nigh. In other language, Christ is very near. I. His Nearness to those whose Love and Desire is Set upon Him. — The idea of an actual and real presence of the Lord Jesus is a stumbling-block to some men. These men cannot receive such a doctrine, neither can they realize it. Now the presence of Christ to the Christian is no fancy of the imagination and no mere uncertainty, but it is a real and personal presence, with power to help and power to guide, and a presence to Whom we may speak with a reasonable certainty of being heard and helped and blessed. II. A Christmastide Nearness. — In very deed the Word is nigh unto us on this day. A great oppor- tunity is at hand. Loving hearts must open on Christmas Day with all the affection of which they are capable to receive Him ; and stony hearts, and sinful hearts, and indifferent hearts, and selfish hearts, and hearts of all kinds, for there will be a blessing for them all. The Word is very nigh with life and hope and promise, and fair prospect, and the offer of a great future. III. His Sacramental Presence. — Jesus is never nearer to us, perhaps, than when we are met together, with true hearts, at His holy table. And in no sense can we hold nearer or sweeter communion with Him than when we are at His Eucharist, filled with the sense of His presence. And we shall not begin our Christmas quite in the right way if we fail to come and partake in the Holy Ordinance. He will not be to us as nigh as He might. If we draw nigh to Him, He will draw nigh to us. IV. His Nearness in His Second Advent. — It is nigh, even at the doors. But of this it is difficult to speak much. As to when it will be we know not. And is this to be wondered at ? Hath not He Him- self told us that of that hour knoweth no man, nor yet indeed the angels, nor the Son Himself, but the Father only ? The thought of His Second Coming is an awesome and terrible one. But our terrors are 160 Ver. 14. DEUTERONOMY XXX., XXX L, XXXIII Vv. 2, 3. mitigated by a reflection that He Who shall come is none other than the Word, Christ Jesus our Lord. — J. A. Craigie, The Country Pulpit, p. 40. ' THAT THOU MAYEST DO IT ' ' The Word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.' — Deuteronomy xxx. 14. Human religions have prided themselves upon their profundity and mystery. The Divine religion pro- fesses to be intelligible to all men and adapted to all. Rightly regarded, this characteristic of religion, set forth in the text, is an evidence of its divinity. A little mind makes a mystery even of a trifle ; a great mind brings down a mystery to its simplest form ; the Divine Mind makes the most glorious truths ac- cessible to the plainest understanding. I. The Plainness of Religion. — (a) The fact that God's communication with men is by means of the Word is itself an element in its simplicity. (0) The Word is intelligible to the human under- standing. The language in which God speaks is human language, and His commandments are such as can scarcely be misunderstood. (c) The Word is impressive to the human heart. The sentiments appealed to are common to all man- kind, such as faith and gratitude and love. (d) There are providential circumstances which render the blessings of the Gospel peculiarly accessible. The Scriptures are circulated in our own language, the Gospel is preached at our very doors, etc. II. The Purpose for which Religion is made so very Plain and Accessible. — This is not simply that we may understand the Word. As the text expresses it, it is that ' thou mayest do it '. (a) Obedience is thus rendered more easy. (b) Disobedience is thus rendered more culpable and inexcusable. Be it remembered that however plain the Word, this will not avail unless the heart be receptive, and in cordial sympathy with Divine truth and law, with Divine Gospel and promise. References.— XXX. 15-22.— A. K. H. Boyd, Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson (3rd Series), p. 177. XXX. 19. — J. Vaughan, Sermons (15th Series), p. 157. F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, p. 289. H. Alford, Sermons, p. 1. XXX. 19, 20.— C. Kingsley, Good News of God, p. 80 ; Westminster Sermons, p. 271. XXXI. 14.— F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i. p. 44. .XXXI. 23.— I. Williams, Characters of the Old Testa- ment, p. 138. Deuteronomy xxxi. 23. Moses, in God's name, did counsel Joshua, Be strong and of a good courage : for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I sware unto them. God immediately did command him (Josh. i. 6), Be strong and of a good courage ; and again (v. 7), Only be thou strong and very cour- ageous ; and again (v. 9), Have I not commanded thee ? Be strong and of a good courage. Lastly, the Reubenites and Gadites heartily desired him (v. 18), Only be strong and of a good courage. Was Joshua a dunce or a coward ? Did his wit or his valour want an edge, that the same precept must so often be pressed upon him ? No doubt neither, but God saw it needful that Joshua should have courage of proof, who was to encounter both the fro- ward Jew and the fierce Canaanite. Though metal on metal, colour on colour, be false heraldry, line on line, precept on precept is true divinity. — Thomas Fuller. ' Take this book of the law and put in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God.' — Deuteronomy xxxi. 26. St. John of the Cross says that God commanded that nothing should be placed within the ark which contained the manna except the book of the law and Aaron's rod, ' which signifies the Cross '. ' Thus the soul which cares for no other thing except to keep perfectly the Law of the Lord and to bear the Cross of Christ, will be a true Ark which will have within it the true Manna, which is God.' — Obras, Vol. 1. p. 22. References. — XXXII. 11, 12. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a, Religious House, vol. ii. p. 331. W. J. Brock, Sermons, p. 1. W. M. Taylor, The Limitations of Life, p. 78. XXXII. 20. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1784. XXXI.-XXXIL— Ibid. p. 341. J. Monro-Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 333. XXXII. 8, 9.— M. Dods, Israel's Iron Age, p. 172. XXXII. 31.— J. Barton Bell, Christian World Pulpit, 1890, p. 74. D. Moore, Penny Pulpit, No. 3342. P. McAdam Muir, Modern Substitutes for Christianity, p. 173. XXXII. 39. — Bishop Alexander, The Great Question, p. 30. XXXII. 47.— H. J. Buxton, God's Heroes, p. 226. XXXII. 48-60.— C. D. Bell, Hills that Bring Peace, p. 143. XXXII. 48-52.— J. W. Boulding, Sermons, p. 1. XXXII. 52.— R. Betts, Christian World Pulpit, 1890, p. 51. THE LAW OF ANTAGONISM ' From His right hand went a fiery law for them. Yea, He loved the people.' — Deuteronomy xxxiii. 2, 3. At first sight the text might seem to involve a con- tradiction, but closer consideration will show that it expresses a great truth, viz. that the severity of human life is an expression of the Divine goodness. I. Consider the truth of the text as it finds expres- sion in Nature. Nature is imperative, uncompromis- ing, terrible. A lofty and unyielding commandment is written over all things, and behind the fiery law is a right hand capable of enforcing it to the utmost, of exacting the last farthing of the overwhelming penalty. In our day the severity of Nature has been recognized as the struggle for existence, and students have shown with great clearness and power how full the world is of antagonism and suffering ; yet these same students distinctly perceive that the struggle for existence is at bottom merciful, and that whenever Nature chooses an evil it is a lesser evil to prevent a greater, (a) They see the advantage of severity as far as all sound and healthy things are concerned. The student of Nature knows well that the fiery law, the law which demands constant awareness, movement, tension, resistance, endeavour, is the law of salvation and perfecting to the whole animal world. (Jo) These students of Nature 161 11 Vv. 2, 3. DEUTERONOMY XXXIII Ver. 27. see also the advantage of severity so far as defective things are concerned. It does indeed seem harsh that by the law of the world weak things go to the wall, and it is often difficult to reconcile ourselves to the grim fact. Yet the scientist sees truly that the fiery law which smites weakness into the dust is just as kind as the sweet light of the sun. It is better for the world at large that weak organisms should be elimin- ated, otherwise the earth would be filled with imper- fection and wretchedness ; it is better for the creatures concerned that they should perish, for why should a miserable existence be prolonged ? II. We consider the text as it finds expression in civilization, (a) Take the struggle of man with Nature. All climates and countries have their special inconveniences, inhospitalities and scourges, and every- where men live in a more or less decided conflict with the elements and seasons. But is not this conflict with Nature part of the inspiration and programme of civilization ? The law of life is truly severe which enjoins that men shall eat bread in the sweat of his face, but in this struggle for life our great antagonist is our great helper ; we are leaving barbarism behind us, we are undergoing a magnificent transformation, we are becoming princes of God and heirs of all things. (6) Take the struggle of man with man. Society is a great system of antithesis. There are international rivalries, a relentless competition between the several races and nations for power and supremacy. But this social rivalry brings its rich compensations. It is so with the international rivalry. Our husbandmen will be compelled to put away all droning ; they must go to school again, they must invent new methods, they must adopt new machines, sow choicer seeds, breed superior cattle ; they must grub up the old canker- eaten, lichen-laden orchards and plant fresh fruit-trees of the best varieties. III. We consider the truth of the text as it finds expression in character. The law concerning human character and duty knows nothing of accommodating itself to our weakness and infirmity, it does not invite or admit excuses for failure or fidelity, it is imperative and uncompromising — a fiery law. And yet we must contend that this severity is only another expression of eternal love. The scientist is reconciled to austere Nature by the consideration that she ' chooses a lesser evil to prevent a greater,' and the same consideration must reconcile us to life. For as the catastrophes of Nature are, after all, but partial and temporary, pre- venting immeasurably greater calamities, so our physi- cal pain, impoverishment, social suffering, severe toil, bereavement, and all our terrestrial woes are the lesser evils, saving us from the infinitely greater one of the superficiality, corruption, misery, and ruin of the soul. VV. L. Watkinson, The Transfigured Sackcloth, p. 191. References. — XXXIII. 7. — J- in a Religious House, vol. i. p Norton, Golden Truths, p. 391. Penny Pulpit, vol. iii. p Contrary Winds, p. 200. M. Neale, Sermons Preached 53. XXXIII. 12.— J. N. Bagnall-Baker, Thursday "121. XXXIII. 16.— W. M. Taylor, WATCHWORDS FOR A NEW YEAR ' Thy shoes shall be iron and brass ; and as thy days so shall thy strength be.' — Deuteronomy xxxiii. 25. We stand at the threshold of another year. The past is irrevocable. The future is before us. How shall we prepare ourselves to go up into it ? I. There are tasks awaiting us ; the life of a true disciple of Christ is not a sinecure. His prayer for us is that we may bear ' fruit,' ' much fruit,' ' more fruit '. Passive piety is scarcely better than none at all. If we are followers of the Christ we may not shrink from cares and burdens and responsibilities. Yet who is sufficient for these things ? If we set out alone and unprepared the journey will be too much for us. My weakness — God's strength, these are the sandals wherewith we journey successfully along the path of duty. II. There are temptations before us. This needs must be. The grapes must be pressed or there will be no wine, but we are never alone in the hour of trial unless we choose to be. A wrongdoer says : ' I couldn't help it ; the temptation was greater than I could bear '. This is never true. The word of the Lord assures us to the contrary. ' Lo, I am with you alway ; I will not leave you alone, I will come to you '. If we yield to temptation it is because we refuse His help, for He is not far from every one of us. And besides this present Christ we have the strong staff" of the Written Word to lean on. A Bible Christian is a strong Christian. III. There are sorrows before us. And where shall we find comfort ? God knows. There is strength in that. ' God is not the author of our calamities. But there is a sense in which God is present always in the midst of pain and sorrow. It does not spring up out of the ground. It does not come to pass without His permission, decree. He controls it, restrains it, and in the long run makes all things work together for good to them that love Him. And our affliction after all is ' light, and but for a moment '. A glance at the starry heavens reveals ten thousand times ten thou- sand worlds, and the longer we gaze the more come whirling into view. How little this world seems: how infinitesimal. So is time in relation to eternity. So is the pain of to-day to the glory of to-morrow. — David J. Burrell, Homiletic Review, vol. lvii. p. 67. References.— XXXIII. 25.— W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 196. C. Bradley, The Christian Life, p. 191. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 1874, p. 256. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 210. H. W". Beecher, Forty-eight Sermons, vol. i. p. 1. XXXIII. 26-28.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 803. THE EVERLASTING ARMS ' The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the ever- lasting arms.' — Deuteronomy xxxiii. 27. This is the blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel before his death. Like the dying prophecy of Jacob, the aged patriarch, when he gathered his sons about him, and like the 162 Ver. 27. DEUTERONOMY XXXIII Ver. 29. last prayer of David the king when he bequeathed his throne to Solomon his son, this farewell of Israel's great leader and lawgiver rises into the music of a psalm. I. There come times to every man and woman, even to the young who are sensitive and enthusiastic, when they are beset with a horrible sense of human futility. This evil mood of contempt for one's self curdles into a temper of scorn for one's brothers. They and we alike seem too ignoble, too fleeting, to be worth seriously troubling over. II. Besides the dreadful sense of worthlessness and futility there is another horror of great darkness which sometimes oppresses the soul. You realize, in imagination, what it would mean to be literally ' lost ' amid the infinite spaces and silences, without a path or a home or a helper. III. We are not the puppets of evil fate, the play- things of blind forces. We are embraced in our father's arms. These very circumstances which we rebel against, these checks and limits which hedge us in, are really the clasp and pressure of His eternal tenderness carrying us along the way which He would have us go. — T. H. Daelow, The upward Calling, p. 154. THE ETERNAL GOD THY REFUGE ' The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the ever- lasting arms. '—Deuteronomy xxxiii. 27. I. A Cry of the Human Spirit. — The text is not the utterance of an exceptional soul, but a genuine cry of the human spirit ; not merely a line of sublime poetry, but a voice from distant ages, which still ex- presses to the world the most fundamental of human needs and becomes the personal and cherished con- fession of the confidence of every religious man, and of every man in his deeper and more religious hours. Sooner or later every son of man is taught the lesson of his own insufficiency, of his need of a strength he does not find in himself, and of a shelter and support which his fellows cannot give, and no earthly interest or object can yield. The truly religious man is just the man to whom God is no mere name, tradition, or opinion, but his one sure refuge and support — the man who has proved in his own experience that God is here and now to the children what He was long ago to the fathers — no less mighty to protect, uphold, and save, and no less abounding in loving kindness and tender mercy. II. The Law of Mediation. — We are set within a system of mediation. It is the office of the natural to lead us to the spiritual, and of the temporal to lead us to the eternal. The whole material universe is a system of mediation by which God would draw us to Himself. The creation is but the Divine thought clothing itself in visible form, and it comes forth into form not only because self-manifestation is a necessity of deity, but in order that the children of God may be led by it nearer to Him Who is the source of their being, and the unseen Power of all good. III. The Refuge from Unsearchable Mystery. — The eternal God is our refuge from the unsearchable mystery of life. In all ages men, bewildered by the vision of great changes, have pronounced the doom of the world because they were not able to see or understand the process of its salvation. Let us not be fearful even if the worst happens. The worst that can happen is often the best for the world. ' From evil good ever evolving,' is perhaps the best descrip- tion we can give of the Divine method. Human life in its evolution has its end as it had its beginning in God. There can be no evil, therefore, in any of the permanent forces which are shaping human society. IV. The Refuge of Sufferers and Sinners. — In times of critical strain and trial to ourselves, and changes in our days which make us feel as if there were nothing steadfast, in the hour of disappoint- ment and unforeseen calamity and loss, in the dark- ness of temptation and sin, sickness and death, let this be our confidence : ' The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms ' — ' thy refuge ' from the world without and the tumults of thine own spirit ; ' thy refuge ' from all the dark shadows which haunt thee, from sleeplessness, tor- menting memories of evil done, and from all invisible terrors ; ' thy refuge ' when thy thoughts bafHe thee, and thy faith fails thee ; ' thy refuge ' from the loneliness of life and in the hour of thy final passion and conflict. — John Huntee, The Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxx. 1906, p. 401. References. —XXXIII. 27. — A. M. Fairbairn, City of God, p. 190. Spurgeop, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 624. A. R. Hender- son , God and Man in the Light of To-day, p. 263. THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS ' Happy art thou, O Israel.' — Deuteronomy xxxiii. 29. It has often been noted that we bestow least thought upon our greatest blessings. When a man is healthy he thinks very little of health. Now as it is with health so it is with happiness. The happy man sel- dom thinks how happy he is. But the heart that is happy is rarely introspective. There is a childlike unconsciousness in its enjoyment. I think then that all the world's talk of happiness is a proof that un- happiness is abroad. Now it is one of the strange contradictions of our faith that the Gospel should have proved itself so unquestionably a powerful factor in creating happiness ; and yet the central figure of the Gospel was a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. I. It is commonly admitted that happiness is only gained as a by-product. If a man makes it the busi- ness of his life to extract happiness from any ore he is almost certain to have his toil in vain. It is when we do not seek happiness that we find it. Make it your all in all, it vanishes. Forget it, then in the passion for sublimer things it comes. The Gospel of Jesus Christ deals with happiness along these very lines. The Gospel of Jesus never says ' Be happy ' ; but the Gospel of Jesus says ' Be holy ' ; aim at the highest, and happiness will come. II. It has been commonly recognized that human happiness has two great enemies. The one is anxiety, and the other is ennui, or listlessness. The Gospel of 163 Vv. 1-12. DEUTERONOMY XXXIV Vv. 5, 6. Jesus is marvellously equipped to fight these foes. I cannot conceive how any Christian can be a listless character. With a soul to save and a character to build, with passions to master and virtues to achieve, with men to help, and with a Christ to know, I think there is work enough for the idlest. III. It has been commonly admitted that happi- ness is to be found among life's common things. It is not the rare gifts, the possessions of the few ; it is not great gifts, great genius, or great power that make the possessors happy. It is health, it is friend- ship, it is love at home, it is the voices of children, it is sunshine. And now comes in the Gospel of Jesus with its great power to consecrate the commonplace. A Christian, as one has said, is not a man who does extraordinary things ; he is a man who does the ordinary things, but he does them in an extraordinary way. He links his commonest joy on to the chain that runs right up to the throne of the Eternal. References. — XXXIII. 29. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1359. XXXIII.-XXXIV.— J. Monro-Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 345. XXXIV. 1-12.— W. M. Taylor, Moses the Lawgiver, p. 434. THE DEATH OF MOSES Deuteronomy xxxiv. i-ia. ' Unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah ' (v. 1). There were other Old Testament death-scenes transacted on the mountains. It was on Mount Gilboa that Saul leaned upon his spear and slew himself. And it was on the summit of Hor that Aaron died. It was near the top of Pisgah that Balaam said, ' Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his '. Compare these two. Very near the place where Balaam was Moses died. Yet what a difference ! There are many, says Matthew Henry, who desire to die the death of the righteous, but do not endeavour to live the life of the righteous. According to the word of the Lord (v. 5) — literally, according to the mouth of the Lord ; whence grew the popular belief that God kissed Moses and he died. LIFE'S UNFINISHED TASKS 1 But thou shalt not go over thither.' — Deuteronomy xxxiv. 4. Moses, after so many years of toil and suffering, stands at the border of the Promised Land, but is not allowed to cross that bordei-. One sin kept him out. Very few of us are allowed to finish the work to which we have set our hand, and we are called from our work just when the reward of completed labour is almost within our reach. I. These words come to the thinker, to the man who seeks an answer to the questions of the reason, to him who would read the riddle of the painful earth. What do our greatest scientists know of matter ? What matter is in itself they cannot tell. Or the thinker may ask what is space? What is time? Again we ask, Is there a Divine and Sovereign Will in the universe ? Is there some far-off Divine event to which the whole creation moves ? These are but a few of the questions thinkers have been discussing for nearly three thousand years. To every thinker, who struggles to reach the region of metaphysical or scientific certitude, there come the words that came of old to Moses. II. But these words come not only to the man of thought, but also to the man of action — the reformer, the statesman, the philanthropist, the inventor, the artist. Livingstone devoted thirty years of his life to Africa, and travelled thirty thousand African miles, that he might not only bring to that dark Continent the blessings of the Christian religion, but also that he might open it up to legitimate traffic, but he died before his task was done. It is said of Opie, that great painter, that despairing of reaching his ideal of artistic perfection, he one day flung down his brushes and cried, 'I never, never shall be a painter '. Why, we ask, are men snatched away thus prematurely ? It is something to have seen the land as Moses did, even from afar. Saint Columba, ere he died, had a vision of the fame and the influence of the little island of Iona. Those who have lived like Moses and Saint Columba died assured that their labours were not in vain. III. These words also come to the saint. The Christian is one who is always looking forward to an ideal, to complete conformity to the image of Christ, to moral likeness to God in a human being. But that ideal the true Christian knows he has never attained. — T. B. McCorkindale, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv. p. 75. Illustration. — Max Midler, the great German philologist, while a young student in Paris, conceived the ambition of being enrolled amongst the members of the French Academy. He received that coveted honour and many another besides, for he was made a member of almost every learned society in Europe. When his youthful ambition was realized, he entered in one of his letters the words so full of pathos, coming from the pen of a man whose life was singu- larly fortunate : ' The dream of the reality was better than the reality of the dream '. References. — XXXIV. 4. — J. M. Neale, Readings for the Aged (3rd Series), p. 9 ; Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 160. Bishop Woodford, Sermons, p. 27. A DEATH IN THE DESERT ' So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab. But no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.' — Deuteronomy xxxiv. 5, 6. The lessons of that death may best be learned if we bring them into contrast with another death and another grave — those of the Leader of the New Cove- nant. I. The Penalty of Transgression. — A little sin done by a loftily endowed and inspired man ceases to be small. The smallest sin has in it the seeds of mortal consequences ; and the loftiest saint does not escape the law of retribution. Turn to the other death — His death was 'the wages of sin' too, and yet it proclaims ' the gift of God,' which is ' eternal life'. 164 Ver. 6. DEUTERONOMY XXXIV Ver. 6. II. The Withdrawal, by a Hard Fate, of the Worker on the very Eve of the Completion of his Work. — It is the lot of all epoch-making men that they should toil at a task the full issues of which will not be known until their heads are laid low in the dust. III. The Lesson of the Solitude and Mystery of Death. — Moses in that solitude had the supporting presence of God. There is a drearier desolation, and Jesus Christ proved it when He cried ' My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? ' IV. The Uselessness of a Dead Leader to a Genera- tion with New Conflicts. — Moses did his work and was laid aside. Christ, and Christ alone, can never be antiquated. — A. Maclaren, The Freeman, 4 May, 1888. References.— XXXIV. 5, 6.— J. W. Boulding, Sermom, p. 1. J. E. Walker, The Death of Aaron, and the Hidden Grave of Moses, No. 12. C. Kingsley, The Gospel of the Pentateuch, p. 222. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BURIAL OF MOSES ' And God buried him in a valley of the land of Moab ; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.' — Deuter- onomy xxxiv. 6. I. I have often put to myself the question : Sup- pose this fragment of the Bible had been lost, should we drop any flower from the garland of revelation ? I think we should. I think there is one thing re- vealed here which is quite unique and which is planted here alone ; I mean the fact that there is such a thing as burial by God. II. Some of the deepest distresses of bereavement come from the denial of funeral rites. Where the body is buried in the mine, where the body is en- gulfed in the sea, where the body is stretched on the battle-field indistinguishable amid the mutilated slain, there is a deeper tone added to the heart's knell. It is a note which Christianity has rather increased than diminished, for the doctrine of resurrection has consecrated the body and made its very dust dear. To such a state of mind what comfort this passage brings ! Here is an explorer lost in the mountain snow. His friends know he is dead ; and it adds to their pain that no human lips have consecrated his dust. And to them there comes this voice : Ye that weep for the dead, ye that lament the burial rites denied, know ye not that there are graves which are consecrated by God alone ! Where the prayer is breathed not, where the Book is opened not, where the wreath is planted not, where the human tear is shed not, there may be a burial of unsullied solemnity — a burial by the hand of your Father. There are consecrated graves where priest never stood, where mourners never knelt, where tear never fell. There are spots hallowed by your Father which to you are barren ground. God's acre is larger than the church- yard. Out on yon bleak hillside He wrapped your friend to rest in a mantle of spotless snow. Is not that bleak hillside God's acre evermore ? Is it not as holy to you as if you had brought sweet spices to the tomb ? It has no chant but the winds, no book but the solemn silence, no bell but some wild bird's note, no wreath but the wreath of snow ; yet there is no more sacred spot in all the diocese of God. — G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 50. ' No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.' — Deuter- onomy xxxiv. 6. Prof. Harper thinks that the fact that the grave of Moses is unknown is indicative of truth : 'Though it would be absurd to say that wherever we have the graves of great men pointed out, there we have a mythical story, it is nevertheless true that in the case of every name or character which has come largely under the influence of the myth-making spirit, the grave has been made much of. The Arabian imagi- nation here seems to be typical of the Semitic imagi- nation ; and in all Moslem lands the graves of the prophets and saints of the Old Testament are pointed out, even, or perhaps we should say especially, if they be eighty feet long. Though a well-authenticated tomb of Moses, therefore, would have been a proof of his real existence and life among men, the absence of any is a stronger proof of the sobriety and truth of the narrative.' References. — XXXIV. 6. — H. J. Buxton, God's Heroes, p. 52. Bishop Goodwin, Cambridge Lent Sermons, p. 253. XXXIV. 10.— J. H. Jellett, The Elder Son, p. 77. XXXIV. 10-12. — W. M. Taylor. Moses the Lawgiver, p. 451. 165 \ JOSHUA JOSHUA ENCOURAGED Joshua i. i-ii. ' Be strong and of a good courage ' (v. 6). When Luther was summoned before the Diet of Worms, his friends did all that they could to dissuade him from going. They were afraid that his safe-conduct would not be respected. But nothing would keep the brave Reformer back, and what was thought of his courage is shown in the words which a great captain is said to have addressed to him : ' Little monk ! little monk ! you are venturing to-day on a more hazardous march than I or any other captain ever did. But if your cause is right, and you are sure of it, go on in God's name, and be of good comfort. He will not forsake thee.' And it was in the same spirit that in the presence of his enemies Luther himself uttered the famous words : ' I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand ; God help me ! Amen.' 'In a large party at the Grand Master's Palace in Malta, I had observed,' says the poet Coleridge, 'a naval officer of distinguished merit listening to Sir A. Ball, whenever he joined in the conversation, with a mixed expression of awe and affection that gave a more than common interest to so manly a countenance. This officer afterwards told me that he considered him- self indebted to Sir Alexander for that which was dearer to him than his life. " When he was Lieuten- ant Ball," said he, " he was the officer I accompanied in my first boat expedition, being then a midshipman, and only in my fourteenth year. As we were rowing up to the vessel which we were to attack, amid a dis- charge of musketry, I was overpowered by fear, and seemed on the point of fainting away. Lieutenant Ball, who saw the condition I was in, placed himself close beside me, and still keeping his countenance di- rected towards the enemy, pressed my hand in the most friendly manner, and said in a low voice, ' Courage, my dear boy ; you will recover in a minute or so. I was just the same when I first went out in this way.' Sir," added the officer to me, "it was just as if an angel had put a new soul into me." ' THE CHARACTER OF JOSHUA Dk. W. G. Blaikie writes : ' We must earnestly desire ... to draw aside the veil that covers the eight-and- . thirty years and see how he [Joshua] was prepared for his great work. ... A religious warrior is a peculiar character ; a Gustavus Adolphus, an Oliver Cromwell, a Henry Havelock, a General Gordon ; Joshua was of the same mould, and we should have liked to know him more intimately ; but this is denied to us. He stands out to us simply as one of the military heroes of the faith. In depth, in steadiness, in endurance his faith was not excelled by that of Abraham or of Moses him- self. The one conviction that dominated all in him was that he was called by God to his work. If that work was often repulsive, let us not on that account withhold our admiration from the man who never con- ferred with flesh and blood, and who was never appalled either by danger or difficulty, for he " saw Him who is invisible ".' References. — I. 1-11. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p. 87. I. 2. — J. F. Cowan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxii. 1907, p. 355. I. 2, 3. — Spurgeon, Hermans, vol. xxxv. No. 2086. THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF JOSHUA 1 Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.' — Joshua i. 3. In the book of Joshua we have three sections ; the first containing the story of the conquest of the land ; the second containing the story of the distribution of the land; while the third gives us an account of the great leader's farewell to his beloved people. I. The story of the conquest is contained in the first twelve chapters. 1. In the story of the conquest there are, I think, three keynotes ; the first of these is Prepare. The account of the preparation is given in the opening chapters, and given in such a way as to teach us the solemn lesson that God's soldiers must be right with God before they can fight God's battles. 2. The second is Pass over. This is the note specially sounded at Jordan, when the people drew their swords and flung away their scabbards, and by crossing the river committed themselves in face of gigantic odds to victory or death. It teaches us that ere God's soldiers are fit to fight there must be in their lives a definite decisive consecration of them- selves to the Lord. 3. And the third is Possess; and this note we have sounded throughout that brilliant series of campaigns which began with the fall of Jericho, and, proceeding from the South to the North, ceased not until the whole of the land was subdued. To the story of the conquest of the land follows : — II. The story of the distribution of the land. This is the second section of the book, and extends from chapter xin. to chapter xxi. It has been aptly compared to the Domesday Book of the Norman conquerors of England. At the twenty-third chapter begins : — III. The story of the leader's farewell. This section contains two addresses, and is one of the most touching and impressive parts of the whole book. While the first address was delivered specially to the heads of the people — the leaders, the judges, and 166 Ver. 6. JOSHUA L, III Ver. 4. the officers — the second address was delivered speci- ally to the people themselves. From this book we learn : — (a) God gives, but we must take possession. As it was with Israel so it is with us. As God gave Canaan to Israel, so He gave Jesus Christ to us. And as the gift of Canaan meant the gift of all that Canaan contained, so the gift of Jesus Christ means the gift of all that He is, and of all that He has. But our enjoyment of all this is conditioned by the claim of our faith. Christ is to us actually what we trust Him to be. (b) In taking possession of what God has given us our strength is of God. This is the lesson taught by what is in some respects the most singular section of the whole book, the section containing the story of the captain of the Lord's host. Joshua knew that victory lay before him, but he thought that it lay with him to compass this victory. But on the plains of Jericho he learned that as it was God's grace which had given them Canaan, so it was God's power which was to enable them to take possession. For us, in our strength, to live up to our privileges is as impossible as to win the privileges up to which we long to live. (c) There is always power enough at our dis- posal for taking possession of what God has given to us. When we have honestly set out to subdue the land we shall see the vision of the Captain of the Lord's host. Every place on which the sole of our feet treads becomes ours. — G. H. C. Macgregor, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 73. References.— I. 5. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1214. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, God's Heroes, p. 71 ; see also Sunday Sermons for Daily Life, p. 404. I. 5, 6. — Edward King, Out- lines of Sermons on the Old Testament, p. 55. J. Matthews, Christian World Pulpit,\vol. xxxix. p. 300. I. 6. — G. Jackson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 75. I. 6, 7, 9, 18. — T. Parr, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 74. I. 7. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 796. H. Montagu Butler, Harrow School Sermons, p. 73. I. 7, 8. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p. 91. I. 8.— J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. 1899, p. 43. I. 9.— A. H. Shaw, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. 1899, p. 56. A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons, p. 97. I. 10, 11. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2039. II. J. McNeill, Regent Square Pidpit, vol. iii. p. 361. II. 21. — H. J. Wilmot- Buxton, Common Life Religion, p. 205. ' Be strong and of a good courage.' — Joshua i. 6 ; Psalms xxvii. 14 ; Psalms xxxi. 24 ; 2 Chronicles xxxii. 7. Courage, my soul ! now learn to wield The weight of thine immortal shield ; Close on thy head thy helmet bright ; Balance thy sword against the fight ; See where an army, strong as fair, With silken banners spreads the air ! Now, if thou be'st that thing Divine, In this day's combat let it shine, And show that Nature wants an art To conquer one resolved heart. — Marvell. ' Jordan divided.' — Joshua iii. ' In the mosaics of the earliest churches of Rome and Ravenna,' says Dean Stanley, 'before Christian and pagan art were yet divided, the Jordan appears as a river-god pouring his streams out of his urn. The first Christian Emperor had always hoped to receive his long-deferred baptism in the Jordan up to the moment when the hand of death struck him at Nicomedia. . . . Protestants, as well as Greeks and Latins, have delighted to carry off' its waters for the same sacred purpose to the remotest regions of the West.' THE FUTURE ALL UNKNOWN (For the New Year) ' Ye have not passed this way heretofore.' — Joshua iii. 4. What a thought for the New Year ! We have here a great statement, and this statement is given as a reason for a certain kind of action. The circum- stances were these : The Israelites had spent forty long, wearisome years away from the Promised Land to which God had said He would bring them, and now they found themselves on the very threshold of the land of promise. They have to go into that land of promise by a strange, mysterious, fearful way. They have to pass through the very bed of the River Jordan, and God, Who has brought them thus far, is to pile up the waters on either side of them while they go through on dry ground. If you will picture them about to cross the river you will realize how fully this statement is true — that they had never passed that way before. It was totally new, abso- lutely strange. Before they reached the Promised Land they had many difficulties to face. They had victories to win and foes to conquer, and had they not the initial difficulty of crossing that great divid- ing river which separated them from that great, mysterious land of promise beyond ? I. There is a Strange Parallel between the Posi- tion of the Israelites and that of Ourselves To-day. — Have we not, by God's grace, been brought to the threshold of another year ? A new year, an unknown year, an untrodden path. And in this new year that lies before you and me we must serve God's great purpose. There is fresh land to occupy ; there are victories, through God's strength, to win ; there are foes ; there are sins which, by God's grace, we are meant to conquer. ' Ye have not passed this way heretofore,' and in entering upon this new year we are treading on new ground, consecrated ground, which our foot has never yet defiled. II. Guidance Vouchsafed. — What was the plan arranged for their guidance? We read it in the third verse. ' When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place and go after it.' What a comforting thing for these Israelites that the ark of God was to lead them ! All through their strange difficulties they had before them that old ark that they had followed all the time and which they loved, which kept them in touch, as it were, with God. What a difference it must have made ! III. Let us See that the Ark of God's Presence Goes Before Us — takes us into our difficulties and 167 Ver. 12. JOSHUA V Ver. 13. out of our difficulties, so that through the presence of God we may conquer our sins and gain from Him our strength in this life. If this be so, we need not fear ; we can face the year with confidence. Let us see that Jesus still leads on till our rest be won. We need to know the way in which we must go. There will be many times of difficulty in this new year. We shall sometimes want to know what words to use and what position to take up in the various incidents of our daily lives ; what course of action we ought to follow. There are bound to be difficulties in the way, and the only way to fight them with anything like hope, with anything like assurance, is that God be asked to help us, that God be asked to make His way clear before our face. ' O God, set watch on my mouth, keep the door of my lips.' Let us trust in Christ to lead us in the right way. IV. The Ark of God never Led them Wrong. — And so it will be if Jesus leads us on, and we are following Him and asking Him to teach us what to say and what to do, He will never lead us wrong. References. — III. 4. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii. No. 1057. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuter- onomy, Joshua, etc., p. 99. C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Ne- glected Texts, p. 224. W. M. Taylor, Outlines of Sermons on the Old Testament, p. 56. W. R. Inge, All Saints' Sermons, 1905-7, p. 49. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sack- ville College Cliapel, vol. iv. p. 34. F. B. Cowl, Straight Tracks, p. 41. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 217. J.Parker, Ark of God, p. 26. III. 5.— E. R. Conder, Outlines of Ser- mons on the Old Testament, p. 67. III. 5-17. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p. 107. III. 11. — A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, part iii. p. 49. III. 15, 17. — R. J. Campbell, Sermons Addressed to Individuals, p. 89. IV. 6.- — P. T. Forsyth, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. 1 1901, p. 415. IV. 7.— W. H. Hutchings, Sermon-Sketches, p. 162. IV. 9.— J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 183. IV. 10-24. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scrip- ture— Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p. 115. THE CEASING OF THE MANNA ' The manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land.' — Joshua v. 12. There was a deep doctrine in the giving of the manna. There was a doctrine not less deep in its withdrawal. I. The ceasing of the manna should teach us that there is inevitable loss in all our gains. It was a great thing for Israel to gain the plains of Jericho, but when they had done so, they lost the bread of angels. We talk sometimes about the gains of our losses, and it is true that we often gain by what we lose. But remember that if we gain by what we lose, it is also true that we lose by what we gain. And he alone is wise and brave and cheerful who recognizes that inevitable law, and presses forward, undaunted, to the best with the courage to forget what is behind. We gain the promised land and lose the manna. We gain experience and lose the morning dew. II. The ceasing of the manna teaches us to be very cautious in asserting that anything is indispensable. If there was one thing graven upon the heart of Israel it was that without the manna they could not live at all. They had to learn their lesson from that failure that God fulfils Himself in many ways. The manna ceased, but the harvesting began. III. The ceasing of the manna gave to Israel new views of the presence and providence of God. It taught them to see God in common things, and to realize His presence in the fields. The manna ceased — they were cast back on nature to find in nature the same care of God. And so they learned, what is so hard to learn, that providence had a wider reach than once they dreamed, and that the common field may be as full of heaven as the manna which is the bread of angels. It is not very hard for any man to feel that God is near in the great hours. When there is nothing startling or arresting, what do you make of the pro- vidence of God ? It is a great thing to see God in the miracle. It is a greater to see Him in the usual. IV. There is one other lesson which I love to link with the ceasing of the manna. It is how God, as we advance in life, brings us back to the food of long ago. That was the path by which God led His people. He brought them back to the old, and it was new. That is the path by which God leads us all if we are in earnest to know and do His will. — G. H. Morrison, The Wings of the Morning, p. 44. References. — V. 12. — J. M. Neale, Sermons on the Blessed Sacrament, p. 143. W. Boyd Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. Iii. 1897, p. 113. THE ARMOUR OF GOD 'And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand.' — Joshua v. 13. I. This ancient book of Joshua, while its simple puipose is to set forth the providence of God in one great episode of a nation's history, is yet by common consent of the succeeding generations of men looked on, not merely as an historical record of the conquest of Canaan, but as a continual allegory of Christian life. Such was the conception of life, based on in- dividual and general experience, in the minds of those who, when the sign of Christ's cross was marked on our brow in baptism, pledged us thereby to a loyal soldiership in an unceasing warfare with evil. Such is the conception thrust upon us by the facts of life, which, as thought deepens and knowledge widens, confronts every son of God. Over against us there stands a man with his sword in his hand, unsheathed, drawn for the using, for offence, for action, for achieve- ment. Over against us there lies a Jordan to be crossed, a Jericho to be assaulted, a Promised Land to be won, only in many an arduous campaign — our weapon the sword of the Spirit, our strength the strength of Him Who has girt that sword upon us, Whose abiding Presence in our life is our sole promise and hope of successful soldiership. Gathering the whole teaching together, who can deny the undoubted call to leave the wilderness of 168 JOSHUA VIII., X., XIII Ver. 1. wandering, unpurposeful life, of cold-hearted, listless stagnation, and cross the river of resolve, to the place of effort and the country of combat ? II. A man with a drawn sword — a weapon of offence for and with others. True, we need, and have given us, armour of defence as well ; a shield of faith to guard us from our own fears and doubts and cares and sorrows, from the evil we see in nature and in man ; a helmet of salvation — the hope which strengthens the weak-hearted, which guards the place where thought abides, and where plans of battle and of work are formed ; a breastplate to protect the heart, where lie the issues of life, the treasures of pure passion, the loves, the sorrows — round these we are to bind the armour of righteous habit ; and for the loins, where lies the strength of man, woven in and out in knitted muscle and sinew, there is the safeguard of truth — the inevitable necessity of sincerity. III. These for defence. But our motto is not de- fence, but defiance ; and for this there is the sword of the Spirit — the Word, the thought of God, all the Divine ideas expressed through the words and lives of men. Let it be drawn, and bright and clean, that so we may wage a continuing and a conquering warfare with evil around and within. Not defence alone, but defiance. References. — V. 13-14.— W. H. Simcox, The Cessation of Prophecy, p. 89. V. 13-15.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv, No. 795. A. F. Winnington Ingram, Under the Dome, p 254. C. Stanford, Symbols of Christ, p. 89. S. A. Tipple Sunday Mornings at Norwood, p. 215. V. 14. — A. Maclaren Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p 123. VI.— J. McNeill, Regent Square Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 161 VI. 2, 3.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 629. VI. 10, 11 — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p. 132. VI. 17. — W. H. Hutchings, Sermon,' Sketches (2nd Series), p. 183. VI. 10.— C. Leach, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 262. VI. 25.— A. Maclaren Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p 140. VII. 1-12.— Ibid., p. 145. VII. 3.— Spurgeon, Sermons. vol. xxiii. No. 1358. VII. 19, 20.— J. T. Bramston, Sermons to Boys, p. 40. VII. 20. — J. Vaughan, Sermons Preached in Christ Church, Brighton (7th Series), p. 94. Spurgeon, Ser- mons, vol. iii. No. 113. The valley of Shechem. — Joshua viii. By general consent the valley of Shechem holds the distinction of being one of the most beautiful in the country. ' Its western side,' says Stanley, ' is bounded by the abutments of two mountain ranges, running from west to east. These ranges are Gerizim and Ebal ; and up the opening between them, not seen from the plain, lies the modern town of Nablous [Neapolis = Shechem]. ... A valley green with grass, grey with olives, gardens sloping down on each side, fresh springs running down in all directions ; at the end a white town embosomed in all this verdure, lodged between the two high mountains which extend on each side of the valley — that on the south Gerizim, that on the north Ebal ; this is the aspect of Nablous, the most beautiful, perhaps it might be said the only very beautiful, spot in Central Palestine.' References. — -VIII. 1. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1358. VIII. 30-34.— K. Moody-Stuart, Light from the Holy Hills, p. 75. ' Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon,' etc.— Joshua x. De. W. G. Blaikie remarks that some commentators look on these words as akin to the prayer of Aga- memnon (Iliad II, 412 sq.) that the sun must not go down till he had sacked Troy. He goes on : ' But whatever allowance we may make for poetical licence of speech, it is hardly possible not to perceive that the words as they stand imply a miracle of extraordinary sublimity ; nor do |We see any sufficient ground for resisting the common belief that in whatsoever way it was effected, there was a supernatural extension of the period of light to allow Joshua to finish his work. References.— X. 6.— R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. i. p. 39. X. 12. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy,\ Joshua, etc., p. 153. W. Walsham How, Plain Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 339. X. 12, 13. — E. C. S. Gibson, Messages from the Old Testament, p. 55. X. 12-14.— W. Ewen, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xli. 1892, p. 294. X. 22-26.— R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. i. p. 239. XI. 18.— C. Jerdan, Pastures of Tender Grass, p. 17. XI. 23.— W. Alexander, The Conquest of the Earth, Sermons, 1872-73. VICTORIES IN OLD AQE ' And the Lord said unto him, Thou art old . . . and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.' — Joshua xiii. I. God often speaks very plainly. Few care to be told to their face that they are old. But the Almighty re- cognizes these awkward facts and bids men recognize them. He is sometimes almost blunt, as He was in addressing Joshua. His is the directness of loving faithfulness. Matthew Henry says : ' It is good for those who are old ... to be put in remembrance of their being so'. And it was for Joshua's highest good that God now puts him in memory of this unwelcome fact. The Bible renders us the great service of introduc- ing us to numerous aged or ageing people. They are not the least interesting figures of its fascinating and often pathetic gallery. Abraham, Sarah, David, Zacharias, and Elizabeth, have honoured place among the venerable saints of Scripture. It is to be observed that old age is associated in the Bible, I think invari- ably, with the saints. The tragedy of godless old age is not alluded to. Only the old age which is a crown of glory, because found in the way of righteousness, is honoured in the sacred treasury of honour. I. Achievement. — Jehovah cheers His aged servant by a great and inspiring implication. It lurks delight- fully in that 'yet*. Thank God for that delectable adverb. 'Yet' carries the idea of 'in addition.' and addition implies something already in existence. ' There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.' Much land had already been possessed. Great vic- tories had been won. The territory of the enemy had been heroically acquired. Joshua had not lived in vain. His greyed head had won its laurels and won them worthily and well. There is a gospel of sweet reminiscence and kindly hope in that gracious ' yet '. 169 Ver. 1. JOSHUA XII I., XIV., XXIV Ver. 15. The Lord, the great Encourager, delights to remind his old warriors of the battles they have by His grace fought and won. He gives them light at evening time in many ways, and not least by recalling to them the ' land ' they have already ' possessed '. Divinely inspired memories are among the treasures of old age. 1. When we are old we, in many cases, have the recollection of temporal achievement. 2. It is a great thing to come to age and know that we have achieved doctrinally. Blessed are they who have possessed themselves of 'much' of this Emmanuel's Land ! S. Experimentally some of God's children achieve grandly ere they are old. They become experts in believing prayer. They abound in thanksgiving. They delight themselves in the Law of the Lord. They hate every evil way. They have fellowship with all such as love Jesus Christ in sincerity. Happy souls that in old age can give glorv to God because they have possessed themselves of ' much land ' in the Canaan of Christian experience ! 4. It appertains to some to recognize in their old age that they have achieved altruistically. II. Omission. — When God said to Joshua, 'Thou art old . . . and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed,' there was kindly reproof in the faith- ful word. If there had been achievement, there had been omission. ' There remaineth yet ' — much had been left undone. He and his braves had possessed themselves grandly, but imperfectly. Jerusalem, Gezer, Bethshean, were but instances of the 'very much' that was still unaccomplished. Those forts were still untaken. What a parable of life ! Age reveals, and increas- ingly reveals, our omissions. Oh, the Jerusalems, Gezers, Bethsheans, of our soldiership ! Why did we not take those proud fortresses when we had boundless vigour ? ' There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.' III. Opportunity. — Even though Joshua was old, he had spacious opportunity before him. ' Very much land remained' 'to be possessed'. He had not the opportunity of earlier days, but it was an opportunity relatively very great. The ' very much ' was the measure of his possibilities. Age always has its opportunity, greater or lesser. What land may not veteran victors possess ! Do not regard old age as defeat ; make it a triumph. God can strengthen Joshua to possess 'very much land,' albeit he be ' old '. Bishop Creighton said, ' We can scarcely recognize as one of the problems of life how to grow old happily '. But it is one of life's hardest and yet most hopeful problems. IV. Endeavour. — ' The Lord said unto him, Thou art old . . . and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.' Then Joshua must make immediate endeavour. ' You are not dangerously ill,' said a physician to a patient; 'but you are dangerously old.' Ah, that is the spiritual peril of some. At once such must bestir themselves. There is no time to be lost if the ' very much land ' is not to be lost. Arise, my friend, and call earnestly upon thy God and go forth to the battle and to the victory ! ' 'Tis time to live if I grow old ' was a favourite exclamation of John Wesley in his closing years. And it is well for all old people to soliloquize thus if they would be victors whilst the shadows lengthen. Very trustful such may well be as they war their good warfare. Philip Henry declared, ' Christ is a Master that does not cast off His old servants '. No ! He never does. And He will not cast you off in the time of old age ! The comforter shall still be with you. The Risen Lord shall empower you. You shall possess the land. — Dinsdale T. Yocng, The Gospel of the Left Hand, p. 43. References. — XIII. 1. — C. Vince, The Unchanging Saviour, p. 120. John McNeill, Regent Square Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 393. XIII. 1-6. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p. 158. XIV. 6. — Ibid. p. 160. D. T. Young, Neglected People of the Bible, p. 59. Joshua and Caleb. — Joshua xiv. 6-15. ' It is beautiful,' says Dr. Blaikie, ' to see that there was no rivalry between them. Not only did Caleb interpose no remonstrance when Joshua was called to succeed Moses, but he seems all through the wars to have yielded to him the most loyal and hearty sub- mission. God had set His seal on Joshua, and Caleb was too magnanimous to allow any poor ambition of his, if he had any, to come in the way of the Divine will and the public good.' Dr. Blaikie remarks also that there is something singularly touching in Caleb's asking as a favour what was really a most hazardous but important service to the nation. The driving out of the Anakim was a formidable duty, and the task might have seemed more suitable for one who had the strength and enthusiasm of youth on his side. But Caleb, though eighty-five, was yet young. References. — XIV. 8. — H. G. Edge, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv. 1908, p. 183. XIV. 8 and 12.— J. T. Forbes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiii. 1908, p. 186. XIV. 12.— K. Moody-Stuart, Light from the Holy Hills, p. 68. XVII. 14. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1882. XVII. 18. — Ibid. vol. xxxiv. No. 2049. C. Herbert, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiv. 1903, p. 378. XX. 1-5.— Dr. Barnardo, Penny Pulpit, vol. xiv. No. 816, p. 209. XX. 1-9.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripkire — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p. 168. XXI. 43-45 ; XXII. 1-9.— Ibid. p. 175. XXII. 10. — T. Bowman Stephenson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xl. 1891, p. 305. XXIII. 1. — J. H. Newman, Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day, p. 170. XXIII. 8.— F. E. Paget, Sermon* for Special Occasions, p. 115. XXIV. 4. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1718. XXIV. 10.— B. J. Snell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. 1899, p. 153. THE ETERNAL CHOICE ' Choose you this day whom ye will serve.' — Joshua xxiv. 15. Joshua here calls Israel to decide between Jehovah's service and the service of other gods, such as their fathers served in Mesopotamia, or such as the neigh- bouring Amorites served. They were no longer to give a half-hearted service, but to choose whom they would serve wholly. The call did not imply neutral- 170 Ver. 15. JOSHUA XXIV Ver. 27. itv, or that they were not bound to serve Jehovah ; but it was meant to arouse the indifferent, and those rho thought they could combine Jehovah's service with that of other gods. A similar call comes to men in the Gospel. I. God's Call to Us. — God demands real and actual service ; not the intention, profession, or appearance, but the thing itself. He is entitled to service as our Creator, Benefactor, Redeemer. In a sense we are all servants. There is no escape from service. We serve that to which our whole heart is given. God's call is to serve Him. II. The Choice. — It is for ourselves to choose whether our service shall be the holy and blessed one of Jehovah or that of other gods. That we may choose is implied in the call to choose ; while it is true that man cannot choose God's service without being made willing by God's grace. God expects us to choose ; offers help to our choosing ; counts us responsible for our choice. In point of fact we must choose, and do actually choose, one service or another. No neutrality is possible, and God will not have a constrained service. III. The Urgency of the Call. — The call is impera- tive for ' to-day '. The decision is to be immediate ; not certainly rash and reckless, without due calcula- tion of the cost, yet certainly prompt on a sufficient view of what the service involves. God's urgency is gracious ; He knows the danger of delay and the evil of indecision, and how men let slip, through careless- ness and procrastination, their most precious oppor- tunities. (a) We may choose now. There is no need to postpone the decision from ignorance of the objects of choice, from their number, from their distance, or from the difficulty of the act of choosing. The infor- mation for guiding the choice is ample and varied, and yet capable of being condensed into simple and exhaustive terms. The objects of choice are practic- ally two, Jehovah or other gods ; two services that cannot be mistaken for each other, and that cannot be combined. There is no embarrassing multiplicity or distracting similarity. (o) We shall find the choice more difficult the longer it is delayed. Delay in doing a thing that is felt to be disagreeable always increases the repug- nance, enfeebles the resolution, paralyses the wilL Some things need to be done at once if they are to be done at all. Sinful habits, making the choice of God's service seem painful, grow in power. Delayed repentance is difficult repentance. (c) The time for choosing is limited. We cannot reckon on a longer or another time than this day. Divine patience even has its limits. The day of grace is not running on for ever, and indecision may pro- voke its abrupt termination. Therefore choose this day. Indecision is contempt- ible and dangerous. You are as unsafe in indecision as if you had decided boldly not to serve the Lord. References. — XXTV. 15.— Spurgeon, Sermon*, voL xxi. No. 1229. A. H. Bradford, Sermon*, vol. xliv. 1903, p. 104. A. Murray, The Children for Christ, p. 124. Henry Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermon*, vol. iii. pp. 423, 439, 456. XXTV. 19.— J. Ker, Sermon*, p. 56. XXIV. 19-28.— A. Maclaren, Exposition* of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., p. 183. XXIV. 25.— W. M. Punshon, The Covenant of Joshua, p. 913 ; see also Outline* of Sermon* on the Old Testa- ment, p. 59. LISTENING STONES 'This stone . . . hath heard.'— Joshua xxiv. 27. And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone — if not great in size, yet in its purpose and symbolism — 'and set it up there under an oak' — well matched — 'that was by the sanctuary of the Lord ' ; the sanctuary is an oak, and the oak is a sanctuary. ' And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us' — or a witness against us, it may be both — ' for it hath heard all the words of the Lord which He spake unto us.' Curious, exciting, incred- ible, certain. ' It shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God,' lest you shake off the memory of your own prayers, lest you break your own covenants, ye men of bad faith, for your history is against you. We want to apply this, not only on the Divine side, but on the human side. Sometimes poetry is the only reality. How often have we quoted the word, that fiction is the greater fact. The king- dom of heaven is represented in parables, and the parables mean that we do not half-understand yet what the kingdom of God is. I. Christ had a good deal to say about stones. Said He once to people who were boasting of them- selves and boasting of their ancestry, ' God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham'. Jesus once said to the devil, to the black face of the universe when that face tempted the Christ to make bread out of stones, ' Man shall not live by bread alone ' — there is no bread of your kind in eternity. God made man come up from eternity, and you could live, if God so willed it, on a word, a syllable, a tone On another occasion the people said, ' Hearest Thou not this crying and tumult ? can this be permitted ? ' He said, If these little children and young folks were to hold their peace, the very stones would cry out, they are listening, and they will not permit too much neglect of Christ The prayerless house may one day rush down, because the stones will stand no longer in protection of atheism so blank and horrible. II. Our very footprints may preach. Some poor forlorn and shipwrecked brother coming and seeing them on the wet sand, they may preach to him a gospel of hope and renewed courage and spiritual blessing. We cannot tell what we are doing, no man can follow the range of his own influence. When did any farmer ever foresee a harvest that would be worth the sickle ? ' There will be no com this year : such and such was the condition of affairs in March, such and such were the conditions climatic in April, that there will be no harvest this year : there is no prospect of our having any need to wield the scythe or the sickle; there is a poor look-out this year.' The 171 Ver. 27. JOSHUA XXIV Ver. 27. stones heard it, and the soil registered it, and lo, August was aflame with the gifts of God. The stars were listening to what we said, good or bad. They are a long way off", they are quite near at hand. Why, the sun is within whisper-reach, if we knew things really as they are : and all the stars coming out, trooping forth, to bear witness for us or against us to God. And when we begin to say, ' If we had heard the Gospel we would have believed it,' the stones will say, You did hear it, you know you heard it. The stones are full of the words that God spake in your hearing. The stone caught it, the sermon you forgot it treasures in its stony heart. III. There were other listeners. Your little child heard when you thought it was not listening. When is a child not listening ? The little child there, four to five years of age, heard that oath you spoke under your breath, and that oath may follow the dear little pilgrim all the days of its life ; it may not be able to explain why, but the oath that fell from your livid lips struck that little creature, and ever after it will hear something, and memory may help the little one to remember what was spoken that day when you thought nobody heard you curse your wife, or husband, or fortune, or life. IV. God hears, God listens, Christ hears, Christ hears everything, nothing can escape the attention of the Divine Hearer ; the whole Trinity is a listen- ing Trinity ! And the stones listen, and the things we call inferior animals have wonderful uses. Let us take care ! The stone heard the words of the Lord, and the stone also heard our replies. Be no longer fools and wasters of time, but heed the living God, and let no opportunity pass. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. v. p. 262. References. — XXIV. 27. — Henry Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. v. p. 63. Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, p. 260. XXIV. 29.— H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, God's Heroes, p. 61. 172 JUDGES JUDGES— DELIVERANCES The book of Judges historically covers the period from the conquest of the land and the death of Joshua to the judgeship of Samuel and the introduction of the monarchy. The chronological history of the book ends with chapter xvi., which connects naturally with the first book of Samuel. That history properly be- gins in chapter m. The book has three divisions : Conditions after Joshua (l-iii. 6) ; the Period of the Judges (in. 7-xvi.) ; Appendix (xvii.-xxi.). I. Conditions after Joshua. — The first act of the people after the death of Joshua was that of seeking to know the will of God as to who should commence the final work of conquest. Judah, the kingly tribe, was appointed. The story is told of the coming of the messenger from Gilgal. A brief retrospect follows of the condition of affairs under Joshua, and then a synopsis of the history which is to be set out in greater detail. II. The Period of the Judges. — This division of the book contains the story of seven consecutive failures, punishments and deliverances and details the history of Israel under the seven judges. Here ends the history of the book. It is taken up again in the first book of Samuel. The remaining chapters and the book of Ruth have their chronological place in the period already dealt with. III. Appendix. — The events here chronicled may have taken place closely following the death of Joshua. They give us a picture of the internal condition of the people, and it is most probable that they were added with that as the intention of the historian. — G. Campbell Morgan, The Analysed Bible, p. 115. ' Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first ? ' — Judges i. i. ' Clarkson, in so far as that question regarded time, was the inaugurator of the great conflict ' against the slave-trade, as De Quincey observes. ' That was his just claim. He broke the ground, and formed the earliest camp, in that field ; and to men that should succeed, he left no possibility of ranking higher than his followers or imitators.' The exploit in which no one will consent to go first remains unachieved. You wait until there are persons enough agreeing with you to form an effective party. And how many members constitute the innovating band an effective force ? ... No man can ever know whether his neighbours are ready for change or not. He has all the following certainties at least : That he himself is ready for the change ; that he believes it would be a good and beneficent one ; that unless some one begins the work of pre- paration, assuredly there will be no consummation ; and that if he declines to take part in the matter, there can be no reason why every one else in turn should not decline in like manner, and so the work remain for ever unperformed. — John Morley. We are afraid of responsibility, afraid of what people will say of us, afraid of being alone in doing right ; in short, the courage which is allied to no passion — Christian courage, as it may be called — is in all ages and among all people one of the rarest posses- sions.— Sir Arthur Helps. The initiation of all wise or noble things comes, and must always come, from individuals — generally at first from some one individual. The honour and glory of the average man is that he is capable of following that initiation ; that he can respond internally to wise and noble things. — J. S. Mill, Liberty. SIMPLICITY IN PRAYER ' The children of Israel asked the Lord.' — Judges i. i. I. ' The children of Israel asked the Lord,' whispered to Him, hailed Him, arrested His condescending atten- tion by some sign of necessity. They whispered to the Lord, they told Him plainly the condition in which they were placed, and brought the whole need under His attention ; they wanted leadership and captaincy and guidance, and they said, Who shall do this ? If any man lack wisdom, let him ask. That is the old word, ' ask,' short but deep, easy to pro- nounce, impossible to measure. We have changed all that ; we now are in danger of approaching the Lord as if He were an infinite Shah, and must needs be approached with long words and logical sequence. II. ' The children of Israel asked the Lord.' That was the plain way, that was the simple way, that is the intensely rational way. We have got rid of some men by putting them into an atmosphere which is fatal to healthy thinking and to resonant and emphatic speaking. We have given them coronets that they may hold their tongues ; we may have pro- moted them that we may get rid of them. It may be so in its spiritual significance with the Lord ; we have polysyllabled Him and addressed Him in long formal speeches ; we have lost the old way of asking Him, talking to Him, breathing upon Him, kissing His hand, and whispering to Him just what we want. Our hope, and the hope of the whole Church, is in simplicity. Such was the method of the text, such the method of Jesus Christ, and of Paul and of James and of all the great historic suppliants on whose girdle has hung the key of the upper sanctuary. 173 Ver. 3. JUDGES I Ver. 29. III. Asking God, talking to God, communing with God, elevates the mind. Talking to God, asking God, laying the whole case before God, sometimes laying it before Him without words, sometimes simply looking into His face, some- times letting our throbbing, aching misery look into the infinite peace of the Divine tranquillity, will lift a man to a new status and clothe him with a new in- fluence and enrich him with an abiding benediction. Let your misery seek the face of the King. IV. ' The children of Israel asked the Lord.' They did not dictate to Him. Prayer is not dictation ; prayer is not always even suggestion, and when prayer is suggestion it is offered with halting breath and with a most reverent faith, lest a suggestion should be not only a sophism but an expression of selfishness. God does permit us to say what we would like ; He is so condescendingly gentle that He sometimes asks us what we would like to have, and when we have told Him He has oftentimes said, No. V. Observe, the people in question were ' the children of Israel '. Character is implied ; character is not only implied, it is recognized and held up as a lesson. They belong to a praying host, to a coven- anted ancestry, they were involved in the baptism of an oath. Do not imagine that a man can leap out of atheism and begin to pray for some selfish pur- pose, and have his answer on the spot. Character de- termines prayer ; the simple heart suggests the right petition ; the sincere spirit, praying at the Cross and in the name of Christ, can alone pray with lasting and ennobling effect. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. i. p. 169. ' And Judah said unto Simeon his brother, Come up with me . . . and I likewise will go with thee.' — Judges i. 3. The spring of virtuous action is the social instinct, which is set to work by the practice of comradeship. The union of men in a common effort for a common object — handwork, if I may venture to translate co-operation into English — this is and always has been the true school of character. — Prof. W. K. Clifford. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. — Carlyle. ' So Simeon went with him.'— Judges i. 3. Boston, in his Memoirs, describes the friendship between himself and a Mr. Wilson as ' having arrived at an uncommon height and strictness. Whatever odds there was in some respects betwixt him and me, there was still a certain cast of temper by which I found him to be my other self. He was extremely modest, but once touched with the weight of a matter, very forward and keen, fearing the face of no man : on the other hand I was slow and timorous. In the which mixture, whereby he served as a spur to me, and I as a bridle to him, I have often admired the wise conduct of Providence that matched us together.' Reference. — I. 6, 7.— G. A. Sowter, From Heart to Heart, p. 20. Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table.'— Judges 1. 7. Besides these evils, another springing out of the long- continued wars betwixt the French and English, added no small misery to this distracted kingdom. Numerous bodies of soldiers, collected into bands, under officers chosen by themselves, from among the bravest and most successful adventurers, had been formed in various parts of France out of the refuse of all other countries. These hireling combatants sold their swords for a time to the best bidder ; and, when such service was not to be had, they made war upon their own account, seizing castles and towers, which they used as the places of their retreat — making prisoners and ransoming them — exacting tribute from the open villages, and the country around them, — and acquiring, by every species of rapine, the appro- priate epithets of Tonoleurs and Ecorcheurs, that is, Clippers and Flayers. — Scott, Quentin Durward (chap. 1.). ' As I have done, so God hath requited me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died.' — Judges i. 7. In The French Revolution Carlyle describes how Foulon as ' a man grown grey in treachery, in grip- ing, projecting, intriguing and iniquity: who once when it was objected, to some finance-scheme of his, " What will the people do ? " — made answer, in the fire of discussion, " the people may eat grass " : hasty words, which fly abroad irrevocable — and will send back tidings.' When the Bastille fell, Foulon was one of the first victims of the popular vengeance. ' Merciless boors of Vitry unearth him ; pounce on him, like hell-hounds: Westward, old Infamy; to Paris, to be judged at the H6tel-de-Ville ! His old head, which seventy-four years have bleached, is bare ; they have tied an emblematic bundle of grass on his back.' Finally he is dragged to be hung, and his mouth, after death, ' is filled with grass : amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people. Surely if Revenge is a " kind of Justice," it is a " wild " kind ! They that would make grass be eaten, do now eat grass, in this manner? After long dumb-groan- ing generations, has the turn suddenly become thine ? ' References. — I. 12-15. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2312. I. 13-15— J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 494. I. 19, 20. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1690. 1 They let go the man and all his family.'— Judges i. 25. The last virtue human beings will attain, I am inclined to think, is scrupulosity in promising and faithfulness in fulfilment. — George Eliot. ' Israel did not utterly drive them out.'— Judges i. 28. If foolish pity be a more humane sin, yet it is no less dangerous than cruelty. Cruelty kills others, unjust pity kills ourselves. — Bishop Hall. 'And Ephraim drove not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer.' — Judges i. 29. With the French it was a settled thing that battles must not be decisive. They fought in a half-hearted 174 Ver. 4. JUDGES II., Ill Vv. 1, 2. way, not because they wanted courage, for braver men than Chadeau de la Clocheterie or D'Albert de Rions, or a hundred others, never walked a quarter-deck ; not because they wanted skill in tactics, for more in- genious manoeuvrers than Acte or Guichen or even Grasse, never hoisted a flag ; but because they had always something other in view than the fighting of a battle. It was taken for granted with them that they must ' fulfil their mission '. The phrase is in- cessantly turning up in their histories. What it meant was, that when an admiral was sent to take this island or relieve that town, he must avoid getting his fleet crippled in a yard-arm to yard-arm fight. . . . The wish to charge home was strong with our men, and the effort incessant, but until Rodney showed the way on April 12, 1782, it was never effectually done. — Me. David Hannay, Rodney, p. 117. References. — I. 11. — M. Dods, Israel's Iron Age, p. 3. II. 1-5. — R. Winterbotham, Sermons, p. 59. R. S. Candlish, Sermons, p. 155. II. 1-10.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Judges, p. 192. * And it came to pass, when the angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept.' — Judges ii. 4. There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright- winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us. — George Ei.iot, Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story. Reference. — II. 4, 5. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1680. • There arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.' — Judges ii. 10. 'Our case,' said Luther once, ' will go on, so long as its living advocates, Melanchthon and friars and learned men, who apply themselves zealously to the work, shall be alive ; but, after their death, 'twill be a sad falling off". We have an example before us, in Judges 11. 10 : " And also all that generation were gathered to their fathers ; and there arose another generation after them, which knew 1 not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel ".' GOD WITH THE JUDGES ' And when God raised them up judges, the Lord was with the judge.' — Judges ii. 18. There is a great principle here, which runs far. That great principle is, God will not forsake the work of His own hands. Only be assured with adequate proof that this or that matter is Divine, and leave the rest. ' When the Lord raised up judges, the Lord was with the judge,' because they were the work of His own hand. God never dies. But if any man makes himself a judge the Lord will not be responsible for that man. That is the whole scheme of life. We can- not build out God ; though we pile our judges high and lay them in great breadths like walls meant to be impregnable, it is all of no use ; whatever it is, it is a poor thing, and not worthy of our notice, and as for our trust, woe to the man who thinks that straw, loose dry straw, can stand against the lava-flood. I. This puts God in His right place ; this asserts and illustrates the sovereignty of God. That is one of the terms that I should not like to become obsolete. Once it was quite a great instrument in the hand of the Church ; the Church was strong in the possession of that conviction, the conviction, namely, that there is one God, one throne, one Providence, and that any who would set himself or themselves against God's eternal providence and sovereignty would simply be carried away as with a flood, and the sea would reject them, and they would be without a place. Why do we not rest upon these great rock truths ? why are we always in panic and in fear ? how is it that men will build upon bog and sand, and not upon the rock ? What is the rock ? The sovereignity of God ; the nearness of the Sovereign, the beneficence of His rule, the love that runs through and accounts for His great ministry of redemption. II. Secondly, the judge recognized the fact that God was with him. He did not live a life of vanity and ambition ; he set a proper value upon his seat. If all our great men and leaders would know that they are where God has put them, many great and beneficent results would come out of that conviction. The judge recognized that he was sent. Being sent, the judge or the representative of God is qualified. The qualification is in his being sent. God chooses no unsuitable instruments ; God is not responsible for the tools and the working of those whom He never called to the judgeship, or sent into the pulpit, or conducted into parliament, or set in high places in the cities of commerce. If we realized that we were sent we should have no fear ; the Lord does not send us without going with us ; there will be no cowardliness, saying, There is a lion in the way. We shall not see the lion because of the glory of the Lord in whose shining all beasts and reptiles are lost as if they never existed. We need some such tonic as this. III. In the third place, all true public appointments and true social economies and policies, prove their divinity by their real prosperity. That is a dangerous doctrine if treated roughly, if not qualified and com- mended by some severe reservations. We must first of all know what prosperity is. IV. The reverse of the text is true. When the Lord did not raise up the preacher, teacher, legislator, statesman, merchant, leader, the Lord never went a step on the road with the man. If the Lord did not make the preacher, the Lord will never appear in a single sermon ; if the Lord did raise up the preacher, all the opponents that righteousness ever had cannot put him down. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. rv. p. 232. Reference. — II. 23.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Judges, p. 196. ' These are the nations which the Lord left . . . that the genera- tions of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof.' — Judges hi. i, 2. Wherever temptation is, there is God also. . . . Nothing is at random, as if temptation were hurry - 175 Ver. 6. JUDGES III., IV Ver. 4. ing here and there like bullets in the air of a battle- field.—F. W. Fabee. 'And served their gods.' — Judges m. 6. ' The conduct of the negotiations,' between the Chris- tian and Moslem powers in Palestine, 'fell to the Templars, and between them and the Saracens there grew up some kind of acquaintance. Having their home in the East they got to know the Eastern character. It was alleged afterwards that in this way their faith became corrupted.' — Froude. THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF JUDGES ' When the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a Deliverer.' — Judges hi. 9. The book of Judges is a book of deliverance, a de- liverance from backsliding. It teaches us : — I. The danger of a faith which stands in the wisdom of man rather than in the power of God. Israel always relied too much on her leaders. The nation of Israel all along was like a nation of children — they had to be kept in the right path by authority. What was then felt in Israel is a very grievous fault among ourselves. Christian people in our churches look far too much to their spiritual teachers, and far too little to God. II. No past experience of blessing removes the liability to sin, or dispenses with the need of watch- fulness against temptation. Israel had trusted God and found Him true. She had seen His power to save, and she was living in the Promised Land ; yet that did not remove her liability to sin. No matter how wonderfully God deals with our souls, no matter how close the fellowship that He grants us, so long as we aie in the flesh we are beset by temptation, and temptation is always dangerous because of our lia- bility to give heed to it. III. No position of honour or favour entitles one to sin with impunity. Israel thought that because she was the people of Jehovah He was bound to take care of her. And she had to be taught that Jehovah's favour was conditional on her obedience. She had to learn that simply because she was the people of God, her sin would be punished more severely than the sin of others. No man can sin with impunity. The clearer the knowledge, the intenser the zeal, the more awful is the fall of him who, presuming on these things, dares to tamper with sin. IV. For recovery from backsliding, however ter- rible, there is provision made in the mercy of God. The book of Judges shows not only that none of the Lord's children may presume, but also that none of them might despair, it shows how God made pro- vision to ensure their being kept faithful to Him. The Lord raised them up by judges by whom they were delivered from the hand of their enemies, and brought back to serve the Lord. For us, if we have backslidden there is the Saviour who is able to save to the uttermost because He ever liveth to make intercession for us. — G. H. C. Macgregor, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 87. ' And Othniel the son of Kenaz died. And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord.' — Judges hi. ii, 12. A man that is at once eminent in place and good- ness, is like a stake in a hedge ; pull that up, and all the rest are but loose and rotten sticks easily removed ; or like the pillars of a vaulted roof which either supports or ruins the building. — Bishop Hall. ' Lucretius, like Naevius a century and a half before,' says Mr. J. W. Mackail, ' might have left the proud and pathetic lines on his tomb that, after he was dead, men forgot to speak Latin in Rome.' References.— III. 15, 16. — Herbert Windrose, The Life Victorious, p. 83. III. 16.— S. Baring-Gould, Village Preach- ing for a Year, vol. i. p. 270. ' And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat.' — Judges hi. 20. I cannot but wonder at the devout reverence of this heathen prince : he sat in his chair of state ; the unwieldiness of his fat body was such, that he could not rise with readiness and ease : yet no sooner doth he hear news of a message from God, but he rises up from his throne, and reverently attends the tenor thereof. Though he had no superior to control him, yet he cannot abide to be unmannerly in the business of God. This man was an idolater, a tyrant: yet what outward respect doth he give to the true God ? Ex- ternal ceremonies of piety, and compliments of devo- tion, may well be found with falsehood in religion. They are a good shadow of truth when it is ; but when it is not, they are the very body of hypocrisy. He that had risen up in arms against God's people, and the true worship of God, now rises up in reverence to His name. God would have liked well to have had less of his courtesy, more of his obedience. — Bishop Hall. 'And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time.' — Judges iv. 4, Compare Knox's courteous farewell to Queen Mary, at their first interview : ' I pray God, Madam, that you may be as blessed within the commonwealth of Scotland, if it be the pleasure of God, as ever Deborah was in the commonwealth of Israel '. The story of Deborah, indeed, forms a frequent difficulty in the writings of Knox, particularly in The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, which is designed to prove, from Scripture and nature, that the authority wielded by women is contrary to God and order. As R. L. Stevenson points out, 'The cases of Deborah and Huldah can be brought into no sort of harmony with his thesis. Indeed, I may say that, logically, he left his bones there ; and that it is but the phantom of an argument that he parades thenceforward to the end. Well was it for Knox that he succeeded no better ; it is under this very ambiguity about Deborah that we shall find him fain to creep for shelter before he is done with the regiment of women.' The refer- ence in the last sentence is to Knox's subsequent retractation of this thesis, in his letter to Queen Elizabeth, in which he admits that if ' in God's pres- 176 Ver. 8. JUDGES IV., V Ver. 9. ence she humbles herself, so will he with tongue and pen justify her authority, as the Holy Spirit hath justified the same in Deborah, that blessed mother in Israel '. Reference. — IV. 4. — W. J. Dawson, The Comrade Christ, p. 151. ' And Barak said, If thou wilt go with me, then I will go ; but if thou wilt not go with me, I will not go.'— Judges iv. 8. Notwithstanding all we may fondly fancy, we can scarcely be called a generation of 'Uebermenschen'. We are doubters, scoffers, grumblers ; but we have not the stuff of which ' Uebermenschenthum ' is made. For that, we should first of all need to believe in our- selves— and who does that nowadays? — From The Letters Which Never Reached Him, p. 34. References. — IV. 8. — J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, p. 279 ; Sermons for Sundays after Trinity (part i.), p. 64. IV. 8, 9.— S. Leathes, Truth and Life, p. 99. IV. 9. — M. S. Glazebrook, Prospice, p. 132. J. M. Neale, /Ser- mons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 167. ' And Deborah said, Up ; for this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand.' — Judges iv. 14. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. — Burke. ' Is not the Lord gone out before thee ? ' — Judges iv. 14. It was most especially in the graver moments of its history that Israel awoke to the full consciousness of itself and of Jehovah. The name ' Israel ' means ' El doth battle,' and Jehovah was the warrior El, after whom the nation styled itself. The camp was, so to speak, at once the cradle in which the nation was nursed and the smithy in which it was welded into unity ; it was also the primitive sanctuary. Jehovah went forth with the host to battle, and in its enthusi- asm His presence was seen. — Wellhausen. ' Then Jael went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground : for he was fast asleep and weary.' — Judges iv. 21. In Old Mortality Scott introduces the same incident in the conversation between Morton and Mistress Maclure, the old, charitable, covenanting widow. ' " Ae night," said the latter, " sax weeks or thereby afore Bothwell Brigg, a young gentleman stopped at this puir cottage, stiff and bloody with wounds, pale and dune out wi' riding, and his horse sae weary he couldna drag ae foot after the other, and his foes were close ahint him, and he was ane o' our enemies. What could I do, sir ? You that's a sodger will think me but a silly auld wife — but I fed him, and relieved him, and keepit him hidden till the pursuit was ower." " And who," said Morton, " dares disapprove of your having done so?" "I kenna," answered the blind woman, " I gat ill-will about it amangsome o' our ain folk. They said I should hae been to him what Jael was to Sisera. But weel I wot I had nae Divine command to shed blood, and to save it was baith like a woman and a Christian." ' References.— IV. 21.— H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1677, p. 455 ; ibid. No. 1677. IV. 22.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 337. ' Then sang Deborah.' — Judges v. i. Of the three main branches of poetry, the only feminine one is the lyrical, not the objective lyrical poetry, like that of Pindar and Simonides, and the choric odes of the Greek tragedians, but that which is the expression of individual, personal feeling, like Sappho's. Of this class we have noble examples in the songs of Miriam, of Deborah, of Hannah, and of the Blessed Virgin. — Hare, Guesses at Truth (2nd Series). Reference. — V. 1. — H. Henley Henson, The Value of the Bible, p. 53. ' The people willingly offered themselves.' — Judges v. 2. What does the character of a citizen involve ? That he will deliberate about nothing as if he were de- tached from the community. — Epictetus. Reference. — V. 2. — J. M. Neale,' Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 229. ' My heart is toward the governors of Israel, that offered them- selves willingly among the people.' — Judges v. 9. In 1637 Samuel Rutherford wrote to Lord Boyd, one of the Scotch nobles : ' If ye, the nobles, refuse to plead the controversy of Zion with the professed enemies of Jesus, ye have done with it. Oh ! where is the courage and zeal now of the ancient nobles of this land, who with their swords, and hazard of life, honour, and houses, brought Christ to our hands ? ' We want public souls, we want them. I speak it with compassion. When every one is his own end, all things will come to a bad end. Blessed were those days, when every man thought himself rich and for- tunate by the good success of the public wealth and glory. — Bishop Hacket. Compare Sydney Smith's eulogium upon Grattan : — ' He was so born, so gifted, that poetry, forensic skill, elegant literature, and all the highest attain- ments of human genius were within his reach ; but he thought the noblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and free ; and in that straight line he kept for fifty years, without one side-look, one yielding thought, one motive in his heart which he might not have laid open to the view of God or man.' References. — V. 9-11. — J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. ii. p. 296. V. 11. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 763. DEBORAH ' Awake, awake, Deborah ; awake, awake, utter a song ; arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam. Then he made him that remaineth have do- minion over the nobles among the people ; the Lord made me have dominion over the mighty. Out of Ephraim there was a root of them against Amalek ; after thee, Benjamin, among thy people ; out of Machir came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer. And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah ; even Issachar and also Barak : he was sent on foot into the valley. For the divisions of Reuben there were great thoughts of heart. Why abodest thou among the sheep- folds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks ? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searching^ of heart. Gilead 177 12 Vv. 12-18. JUDGES V Ver. 16. abode beyond Jordan : and why did Dan remain in ships ? Asher continued on the sea-shore and abode in his creeks. Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.' — Judges v. 12-18. Not a few difficulties we have created for ourselves by that mischievous and often fatal habit of import- ing into the text of Scripture more than it actually and necessarily, or even by implication contains. From the simple fact that Deborah is called a ' pro- phetess ' some tremendous but unwarrantable in- ferences have been drawn. It has been assumed that all her words were God's words, and that all her acts had a Divine sanction prompting and justifying them. And that even the fierce and ruthless spirit of her song was one that God inspired. I would only offer for your consideration two remarks in connexion with these difficulties. I. It is adopting a perilous principle to argue that an action must be right because, as we suppose, God commanded it. It is. a safer rule of interpretation to infer that if an action, of which we know the details, or so far as we know them, is manifestly wrong — opposed to the instinctive sense of right, or goodness, or truth, or holiness, which, if the world were rocking beneath our feet, we still should feel to be inimitable — it could not have been an act commanded by Him Whose essential characteristics are equity, goodness, holiness, truth. II. Deborah's prophetic gift was, so far as we have materials for estimating it, rather an afflatus of poetic inspiration than anything deeper or more Divine. Nor even if we were sure that Deborah was gifted with predictive powers, would that necessitate, or even justify the conclusion that all her utterances, when not claiming to be spoken under special guidance of the Holy Spirit, were utterances of infallible truth or of inimitable morality. And so her words have no claim to supersede that standard of right and wrong which we believe to be implanted in our con- science by God ; and by which even words professing to be Divine must, in the case of each individual re- sponsible man, be ultimately tested and weighed. III. The prophetess, even in her moment of highest exultation, cannot forget those who, in their country's critical hour, when freedom, honour, independence — everything that constitutes the real life and force of a nation — was in jeopardy, and one bold, united effort might achieve deliverance, stood apart in the isolation of rivalry, or selfishness, or in the inglorious love of ease, and ' came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty'. May I venture to apply the lesson to our own circumstances. No one can be blind to the fact that Christianity is confronted all over the civilized world by a gigantic foe. I know not by what better name to call it than ' the spirit of un- belief. A moral unbelief in the existence of truth rather than an intellectual unbelief, staggered and perplexed by speculative difficulties. Religion is not, as it has been called, the produce of credulity and poetry. It is the product of the profoundest and truest instincts — at least if their universality is any test of their truth — of our nature. All that con- stitutes the true nobility of human nature is propor- tionate to the influence of this sense in man. Are we doomed never to realize this temper under which alone higher results are possible ? Shall we, broken up into miserable sets and parties, stand selfishly and suspiciously by, while Zebulun and Naphtali — the more generous spirits of the age — are jeoparding their lives unto the death in the high places of the field ? Oh ! how one longs to gather into one camp, or to mass together in supporting columns on the great battle-field, all those who, however differing on points of lesser detail, are yet united in this — the great uniting influence — that they love the Lord Jesus Christ in all sincerity ! — J. Fkaser, University and Other Sermons, p. 137. References. — V. 12. — Spurgeou, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 340. V. 12-23.— J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. i. p. 167. ' There were great searchings of heart.' — Judges v. 16. ' In the greatest war-song of any age or nation,' says Mr. R. H. Hutton, ' the exultation of Deborah over Sisera's complete defeat, and subsequent assassination by the hand of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite — no doubt, personal revenge might seem to blaze high above Deborah's faith in her nation and her God, as the kindling or exciting spiritual principle which brings the scene in such marvellous vividness before her eyes. But though this feeling may add perhaps some of the fire to the latter part of the poem, it is clear that her faith in the national unity, and God as the source of the national unity, was the great binding thought of the whole. The song dwells, first, with the most intense bitterness on the decay of patriotism in the tribes that did not combine against the common foe. . . . And the transition by which she passes to her fierce exultation over Sisera's terrible fate shows distinctly what was the main thought in her mind.' THE APOLOGIA OF THE COWARD ' Why abodest thou among the sheep-folds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks ? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.' — Judges v. 16. Israel was in bondage, Jabin, King of the Canaanites, ruled the captive nation with a rod of iron. In Israel's land there was a gifted woman, who nursed the fires of her own patriotism and that of her countrymen, and waited but for the opportunity to strike the blow for liberty. Deborah — prophetess and poetess — never doubted the time would come when Israel's God would remember His former loving- kindness and restore His people freedom, forfeited by their sin. And the men of Israel rose at the call, and under the lead of Barak they made a grand and successful attempt to regain their liberty. But amongst those who did not come to the help of the warrior-prophetess was the tribe of Reuben. They had great heart-searchings but it only led to a policy of masterly inactivity. I. Thousands of men miss the best life has to offer because they can never rise to a great occasion. 178 Ver. 17. JUDGES V Ver. 23. They never train themselves to make a great de- cision. They are debating when they ought to be fighting. They are searching their own hearts when they should be smiting the enemy. Life's prizes are for the brave. God gives no guerdon to the coward. The names enshrined in the muster-roll of His Iron- sides, in the chapter of the roll-call — the 11th of Hebrews — are all men who dared to do. By faith they stopped the mouths of lions. And the man who would ever do anything must make his reckon- ing with the lions. II. Like father, like son, never received a more powerful illustration than in the case of the Reuben- ites. The head of their tribe was a moral weakling, Reuben was a human jelly-fish. The Reubenites are one of the lost tribes, as a tribe, but you will find them dispersed in every place under the sun. He is a very nice man, the modem Reuben, but woe to you if you trust him in a moral crisis. He will offer you sugar plums when it is shot you need. He has no opinions he cannot change and no principles he is not prepared to forswear, if they stand in the way of his getting on. III. If Deborah and Barak had waited until the heart-searchings of the Reubenites found expression in military action, Israel would never have been de- livered. All great movements have been the work of one strong will. There are times when one Deborah, with the light of a great purpose in her eyes, is worth all the men of the tribe of Reuben put together. The practical lesson in the study of this tribe of moral invertebrates is first of all that every man should train his will to act quickly and decisively in great questions. There are those, for example, who all their life keep Christ at the bar of their judgment, and are perpetually asking: 'Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another ? ' They are not Christians. They are not anti-Chris- tians. They are amongst those who are always seek- ing but never find the truth. IV. Is not the text an illustration of the fact that to nations and Church there come times of great moral testings, when they need to throw aside the counsels of a timid opportunism, and dare to do right and follow the flag of duty at whatever cost. Reference. — V. 16. — -A. Scripture — Judges, p. 206. ' Why did Dan remain in ships ? Asher continued on the sea- shore.'— Judges v. 17. All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) Bringing one's activities into har- mony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience, in order to be able to con- tinue to live as before. — Tolstoy. Commenting on Cromwell's letter from Ely, in which his ardent, heroic spirit breathes, Carlyle asks : ' Brother, hadst thou never, in any form, such mo- ments in thy history ? Thou knowest them not, even by credible rumour? Well, thy earthly path was peaceabler, I suppose. But the Highest was never in Maclaren, Expositio?is of Holy thee, the Highest will never come out of thee. Thou shalt at best abide by the stuff; as cherished house- dog, guard the stuff — perhaps with enormous gold- collars and provender ; but the battle, and the hero- death, and victory's fire-chariot carrying men to the Immortals, shall never be thine. I pity thee : brag not, or I shall have to despise thee. ' Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field. —Judges v. 18. I like battle-fields ; for, terrible as war is, it neverthe- less displays the spiritual grandeur of man who dares to defy his most powerful hereditary foe — Death. — Heine. References. — V. 18. — J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 113. E. J. Hardy, Faint yet Pursuing, p. 85. V. 20. — A. Maclaren, Expositions oj 'the Holy Scripture — Judges, p. 209. ' Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof ; because they came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty.' — Judges v. 23. When truth is in danger, the conduct of many is to wash their hands in Pilate's basin of weak neutrality, but they only soil the water and do not cleanse their hands. Of how much nobler a spirit is the favourite text of the old Covenanters ; ' Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of the I^ord, curse ye bitterly the inhabi- tants thereof ; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty ! ' — Dr. John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life. It was the companionship of that other virtue of valour in a good cause which made so bright the moderation of Aristides and of Athens, the spirit in which the city of Pallas had arisen to face the invader alone, when in the other states of Hellas ' there were great searchings of heart,' when some of the mightiest quailed, and shrank more from danger than from the coward's curse — the curse pronounced by the Hebrew Deborah against the men of Meroz, ' because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty '. — Ernest Myers in Hel- lenica, p. 24. Cvrse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord ; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof — sang Deborah. Was it that she called to mind any personal wrongs — rapine or insult — that she or the house of Lapidoth had received from Jabin or Sisera ? No ; she had dwelt under her palm-tree in the depth of the moun- tain. But she was a mother in Israel ; and with a mother's heart, and with the vehemency of a mother's and a patriot's love, she had shut the light of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips, on the people that had jeoparded their lives unto the death against the oppressors ; and the bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same love, she precipitated in curses on the selfish and coward recreants who came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. As long as I have the image of Deborah before my eyes, and while I throw myself back into the age, country, circumstances of their Hebrew Boadicea, in 179 Ver. 23. JUDGES V Ver. 23. the not yet tamed chaos of the spiritual creation ; — as long as I contemplate the impassioned, high-souled, heroic woman in all the prominence and individuality of will and character — I feel as if I were among the first ferments of the great affections — the proplastic waves of the microcosmic chaos, swelling up against — and yet towards — the outspread wings of the Dove that lies brooding on the troubled waters. — Coleridge, Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit. FELLOW- LABOURERS WITH QOD ' They came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.' — Judges v. 23. I. Fellow -labourers with God. — The Almighty God needs the help of His creatures, of us and of our fellows. God has been pleased to use His own human children to help Him in the work which He desires to be done. We see in the Old Testament and in the New that God absolutely limits His own power by the will of His creatures. It is recorded that when God would overthrow the cities of the plain, the angel said to Lot : ' Haste thee, escape thither ; for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither '. And of our Lord Himself it is said, speaking of His own country, that He ' could there do no mighty works, because of their unbelief '. Man can refuse if he will to come ' to the help of the Lord '. And more than that, he can even take an antagonistic line to God. Gamaliel warned his hearers to 'refrain from these men, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God '. St. Paul, writing to the Philippians, spoke of ' the enemies of the Cross of Christ '. II. What is our Position ? — What is to be our position in this matter ? Are there not many who say, ' It is the last thing in the world I should desire to be, an enemy of the Cross of Christ, I should abhor above all things to be fighting against God ; but I am not quite prepared to take vigorous action on His behalf. Cannot I remain neutral ? ' In the old laws of the lawgiver, neutrals were ordered to be put to death, and though the penalty is not so severe under the Christian dispensation, yet we cannot but remember those words of our Blessed Master : ' He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me, scattereth '. Have we no cause to band ourselves together to come ' to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty ' ? III. How We can come to the Help of the Lord. — If you ask, How can / come to God's help ? What can / do ? then surely in the very forefront of our marching orders is 'Pray '. (1) Prayer is in the power of every one of us, and how potent that is we know, not alone from the history of the Church, but from the Scriptures themselves. It was said by St. Augustine in his sermon on St. Stephen's Day : ' If Stephen had not thus prayed the Church had not had Paul '. It was the prayer of Stephen for his murderers that gave to the Church the great Apostle of the Gentiles. And when we think of St. Augustine, we are reminded how his holy mother, Monica, prayed long and earnestly for him, prayed for him while there seemed to be no hope of his conversion, while he was living in heathen philosophy and licentiousness ; and the prayers of that saintly woman won for the Church the great Augus- tine. And that same power of prayer is within the possibility of the meanest ; the commonest, the poorest, the least educated may yet pray, and pray with a power which shall rule the world. Let us take care that day by day, morning by morning, evening by evening, we lift up our heart to God, praying not only for ourselves, but for all those in need and necessity. (2) It is not only our prayers, and our time and talents, but our substance the Lord will accept from us. All of us are able to do something. Those who are given much can give plenteously ; those who have little can still do their diligence gladly to give of that little. And if we are thus taking our part in God's work, thus doing that which we can to help Him in this mighty work in which He makes us fellow- labourers with Himself, then that word will be spoken to us that Abigail spoke to David : ' The Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house : because my lord fighteth the battles of the Lord ' (1 Sam. xxv. 28). CHRIST AND THE NATIONAL LIFE ' Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof : because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.' — Judges v. 23. Deborah identifies the cause of Israel with the cause of Israel's God. Identification of patriotism and re- ligion belongs to an early phase of religious develop- ment, and is unquestionably associated with the crudest notions of the Diety. I. These fierce words enshrine a conception of human affairs which is profoundly true, and apparently Chris- tian. That human affairs are the scene of a true con- flict between the will of God and of pugnant forces, that every individual must have his place therein for or against the will of God, that no individual is so without illumination on the supreme issue as not to be able, if he will, to ally himself with the Divine cause — these are the very assumptions of morality, and they are taken for granted in the Gospel. II. Can we simply accept the national interest in the conventional and obvious sense of the phrase as com- petent to interpret for us our religious duty? We shall all agree that Christianity cannot be satisfied by those suggestions. The religion of Christ is not, in the old sense of the phrase, a national religion. God still speaks to us as in the old prophetic age, most authori- tatively and intelligibly within ourselves. This interior guidance, as it is ministered in the solitude of the in- dividual spirit, so it is incompetent for the purposes of general direction. III. What then ought to be the effect on our political conduct of our accepting the prophetic notion of human affairs as the arena of a conflict ? Three consequences seem to follow directly from such a doc- trine : — (a) We shall inevitably take a larger view of public duty. 180 Ver. 24. JUDGES V Ver. 31. (6) We will have a high estimate of personal re- sponsibility. (c) There will be an intimate relation maintained between politics and religion. — H. Hensley Henson, Christ and the Nation, p. 73. References.— V. 23. — H. P. Liddon, University Sermons, (2nd Series), p. 264. W. Baird, The Hallowing of Our Common Life, p. 70. C. Hook, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. vi. p. 42. Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, p. 287. Bishop Winnington Ingram, Mission of the Spirit, p. 83. ' Blessed above women shall Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, be.' — Judges v. 24. The types of female excellence exhibited in the early period of Jewish history are in general of a low order, and certainly far inferior to those of Roman history or Greek poetry ; and the warmest eulogy of a woman in the Old Testament is probably that which was bestowed upon her who, with circumstances of the most aggra- vated treachery, had murdered the sleeping fugitive who had taken refuge under her roof. — Lecky, History of European Morals, 11. p. 337. In one of Richard Cameron's most violent sermons, during the ' killing ' days of the seventeenth century in Scotland, he employs this verse to justify the assas- sination of tyrants and oppressors : — ' I know not if this generation will be honoured to cast off these rulers, but those that the Lord makes instruments to bring back Christ, and to recover our liberties, civil and ecclesiastic, shall be such as shall disarm this king and set inferiors under him, and against whom our Lord is denouncing war. Let them take heed unto themselves, for though they should take us to scaffolds, or kill us in the fields, the Lord will yet raise up a party who will be avenged upon them. And are there none to execute j ustice and j udgment upon these wicked men who are both treacherous and tyrannical ? The Lord is calling men of all ranks and stations to execute judgment upon them. And if it be done we cannot but justify the deed, and such are to be commended for it as Jael was. " Blessed above women shall Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, be." ' Even in the Reformation age, the killing of tyrants was held to be a worthy task. Thus Melanchthon, in one of his letters, wishes that some good man would kill the " English Nero," Henry VIII. A saying of similar import is quoted by Loesche in his Analecta Lutherana et Melanthoniana, p. 159. References. — V. 24. — T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture. Ibid. Sermons, vol. vi. p. 57. Bishop Woodford, Occasional Sermons, p. 161. H. P. Liddon, Contemporary Pul- pit, vol. vi. p. 65. 'With the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head.' — Judges v. 26. A full meal is like Sisera's banquet, at the end of which there is a nail struck into the head. — Jeremy Taylob. I did long achingly, then and for four-and-twenty hours afterwards, for something to fetch me out of my present existence, and lead me upwards and onwards. This longing, and all of a similar kind, it was necessary to knock on the head ; which I did, figuratively, after ,the manner of Jael to • Sisera, driving a nail through their temples. Unlike Sisera, they did not die : they were but transiently stunned, and at intervals would turn on the nail with a rebellious wrench : then did the temples bleed, and the brain thrill to its core. — Charlotte Bronte in Villette. ' At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down ; at her feet he bowed, he fell ; where he bowed, there he fell down dead.' — Judges v. 27. We see the mournful contrast between life and death, which all poetry has lingered over. Greatness, as struck down at one blow, in the midst of its honours and the tribute paid to it, produces a passing emotion of sympathy even in the mind of the Jewish prophetess, while her main thoughts follow her country's rescue : and the mighty foe is laid low in that grand solemnity of verse, and in that sad picture of death, in which a high compassion speaks : ' At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down ; at her feet he bowed, he fell ; where he bowed, there he fell down dead '. — Mozley. ' To Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil.' — Judges v. 30. The sentiment even of the woman's delight in the dresses won in the spoils transpires through the war- like rejoicing: the pieces of embroidery are counted over in imagination as they are torn away from the mother and the harem of Sisera for the women of Israel. — Stanley. ' So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord : but let them that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.' — Judges v. 31. The exultation with which the poet dwells on the treachery of the act, on the helpless prostration of the great captain's corpse before a mere woman's knees ; the terrible minuteness with which she gloats over the raised expectations of the mother of the murdered soldier ; the picture of the ' wise ladies ' in attendance suggesting triumphant reasons for the delay, and of the anxious eagerness with which she even suggested these reasons to herself — no doubt indicate fierce personal as well as fierce patriotic triumph. But the whole tenor of this grand poem and the conclusion, 'So let all thy enemies perish, O Lord ; but let them that love Thee be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might,' at all events prove that the personal hatred was so closely bound up with the representative feelings of the writer as a judge of Israel, and with her trust in the Lord of Hosts, that the latter lent a kind of halo to the unscrupulous ferocity of the former. — R. H. Hutton. Compare Cromwell's description of the battle of Marston Moor. ' Truly England and the Church of God hath had a great favour from the Lord, in this great Victory given unto us, such as the like never was since this War began. It had all the evidences of an absolute Victory obtained by the Lord's bles- sing upon the godly party principally. We never 181 Ver. 31. JUDGES V., VI Ver. 11. charged but we routed the enemy. . . . The particu- lars I cannot relate now ; but I believe, of twenty thousand the Prince hath not four thousand left. Give glory, all the glory, to God.' ' And the land had rest forty years.' — Judges v. 31. Speaking in 1657 of his own Protectorate, Cromwell declared : ' I profess, I think I may say : Since the beginning of that change — though I should be loath to speak anything vainly — but since the beginning of that change to this day, I do not think there hath been a freer procedure of the Laws, not even in those years called, and not unworthily, the " Halcyon Days of Peace " — from the Twentieth of Elizabeth to King James' and King Charles' time. I do not think but the Laws have proceeded with as much freedom and justice since I came to the Government, as they did in those years so named " Halcyon ".' JEWISH ZEAL, A PATTERN TO CHRISTIANS ' So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord ; but let them that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.' — Judges v. 31. A certain fire of zeal, showing itself, not by force and blood, but as really and certainly as if it did — cutting through natural feelings, neglecting self, preferring God's glory to all things, firmly resisting sin, protest- ing against sinners, and steadily contemplating their punishment, is a duty belonging to all creatures of God, a duty of Christians, in the midst of all that excellent overflowing charity which is the highest Gospel grace, and the fulfilling of the second table of the Law. — J. H. Newman. References. — V. 31. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Judges, p. 217. V. 31. — J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iv. p. 173. V. — M. Dods, Israel's Iron Age, p. 173. GIDEON THE HUMBLE Judges vi. I. At first sight the character of Gideon is a very inconsistent one. It seems to be composed of two opposite sides — towering aspiration and drooping humility. Was there not imposed upon him a great, a responsible destiny — a destiny which he must not seek to evade. Was he not bound to become the Saviour of Israel. So speaks the one side of his nature — the aspiring side. But there is another side. This same Gideon is the most humble of men, the most shrinking, the most cowering, the most timorous. That a man capable of lofty aspirings should be as mis- trustful of himself as if he were a village rustic — this seems an unaccountable thing. But is the village rustic distrustful of himself. The rustic, in pro- portion as his rusticity is deep, is increasingly removed from humility. Humility is incompatible with ab- solute ignorance. There is then no contradiction but a beautiful harmony between the two sides of Gideon's character. So far from interfering with his humility his aspirations are the cause of his humility. It is the brightness of his ideal that makes him shrink in dismay. II. When Gideon has set himself right he proceeds to set right his people. Where does he begin ? By changing their ideal of God. A man's religion is the root of his whole conduct. The first step to Gideon's success is effected not by material force, but by the power of spirit. When the worshippers of Baal come to the shrine in the morning, they find this sanctuary in ruins. They have no doubt that the perpetrator of the sacrilege is Gideon. Why then do they not put him to death ? It is the very ruin of the shrine of Baal that makes them despise their idol. They cannot adore weakness even in their God. The effect of this silencing of Baal is the assembling of multi- tudes round the banner of Gideon. His ranks swell from day to day, till his adherents number thirty- two thousand. He reduces them to three hundred. He is jealous for God, jealous for the manifestations of the Divine power. He will not suffer human agencies to bear the credit of that help which he refers to God alone. III. Every religious man wants to have the ex- perience of strength from above. Gideon wished to have this experience. It was this that made him re- duce his thirty-two thousand to three hundred. Here is a great paradox — humility made a source of con- fidence ! but it is a paradox that has its ground in truth. Timid men are humble ; but humble men need not be timid. There is a humility which makes us bold — Christian humility. — G. Matheson, Re- presentative Men of the Bible, p. 150. ' Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up out of the house of bondage.'— Judges vi. 8. It is not merely for being redeemed that we are called on to feel thankful, but for being redeemed by the blood of the God-man Jesus Christ, which He poured out for us on the cross. So it was not simply as God that Jehovah was to be worshipped by the Jews ; but as the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the house of bondage, whose voice they had heard and lived, who had chosen them to be His people, and had given them His laws, and a land flowing with milk and honey. The last sentence has suggested a query of some importance. Out of the house of bondage : What says the advocate of colonial slavery to this ? That the bondage was no evil ? That the deliverance of a people from personal slavery was not a work befit- ting God's right hand ? ... To those religious men who are labouring for the emancipation of the negroes, amid the various doubts and difficulties with which every great political measure is beset, it must needs be an inspiring thought that to rescue a race of men from personal slavery, and raise them to the rank and self-respect of independent beings is, in the strictest sense of the word, a God-like task ; inasmuch as it is a task which, God's book tells us, God Him- self has accomplished. — Hare, Ouesses at Truth (1st Series). ' Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.' — Judges vi. ii. What shifts nature will make to live ! O that we could be so careful to lay up spiritual food for our 182 Ver. 12. JUDGES VI., Vll Ver. 7. souls, out of reach of those spiritual Midianites ! We could not but live in despite of all adversaries. — Bishop Hall. References. — VI. 11. — J. Sherman, Penny Pulpit, vol. v. p. 313. VI. 11-13.— J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 171. ' And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him.' — Judges vi. 12. Though a great and momentous truth is involved in the saying, that when need is highest, then aid is nighest, this comfort belongs only to such as acknow- ledge that man's waywardness is ever crossed and over- ruled by a higher power. — Hare, Guesses at Truth (2nd Series). ' We are therefore,' writes Burke in his ' First Letter on a Regicide Peace,' 'never authorized to abandon our country to its fate, or to act or advise as if it had no resource. There is no reason to apprehend, be- cause ordinary means threaten to fail, that no others can spring up. Whilst our heart is whole, it will find means or make them. The heart of the citizen is a perennial spring of energy to the state. Because the pulse seems to intermit, we must not presume that it will cease instantly to beat. The public must never be regarded as incurable.' References. — VI. 12, 13. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 374. VI. 14. — Ibid., Sermons for the Church Year, vol. i. p. 130. 'Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor, and I am the least in my father's house.'— Judges vi. 15. How the good man disparages himself ! Bragging, and height of spirit, will not carry it with God. None have ever been raised by Him, but those which have formerly dejected themselves : none have been confounded by Him, that have been abased in them- selves.— Bishop Hall. After his return from India, as a young officer, in ill-health and depression, Nelson declares that, ' I felt impressed with a feeling that I should never rise in my profession. My mind was staggered with a view of the difficulties I had to surmount, and the little interest I possessed. I could discover no means of reaching the object of my ambition. After a long and gloomy reverie, in which I almost wished myself overboard, a sudden glow of patriotism was kindled within me, and presented my king and country as my patron. " Well, then," I exclaimed, " I will be a hero! And, confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger." ' References.— VI. 19.— J. W. Atkinson, Penny Pulpit, No. 1052. VI. 22-24.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1679. ' And the Lord said, Peace be unto thee. Then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord, and called it Jehovah-shalom.' — Judges vi. 23, 24. Peace may be sought in two ways. One way is as Gideon sought it, when he built his altar in Ophrah, naming it, ' God send peace,' yet sought this peace that he loved, as he was ordered to seek it, and the peace was sent in God's way : — ' The country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon.' And the other way of seeking peace is as Menahem sought it, when he gave the King of Assyria a thousand talents of silver, that ' his hand might be with him '. That is, you may either win your peace or buy it — win it, by resistance to evil ; buy it, by compromise with evil. — Buskin in The Two Paths. References. — VI. 24. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Judges, p. 225. ' Thy son hath cast down the altar of Baal. . . . And Gideon made an ephod, and put it in his city.' — Judges vi. 30, and vm. 27. Where thou findest a Lie that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extin- guished ; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well, meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it : not with hatred, with headlong selfish violence ; but in clearness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity. Thou wouldst not replace such ex- tinct Lie by a new Lie, which a new Injustice of thy own were ; the parent of still other Lies ? Whereby the latter end of that business were worse than the beginning. — Carlyle, French Revolution. And he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh ; who also was gathered after him.' — Judges vi. 35. They thronged after him and now professed them- selves believers in Jehovah. They were not hypo- crites. They really believed now, after a fashion, that Baal could not help them. Their fault was that they believed one thing one day and another thing the next. — W. Hale White, Miriam's Schooling, p. 7. References. — VI. 36-40. — E. Paxton Hood, Sermons, p. 430. VI. 37. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Judges, p. 233. VII. 1-8. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Judges, p. 236. ' By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you.' — Judges vii. 7. Nothing is done effectually through untrained human nature ; and such is ever the condition of the multi- tude. . . . Every great change is effected by the few, not by the many ; by the resolute, undaunted, zealous few. Doubtless, much may be undone by the many, but nothing is done except by those who are specially trained for action. — Newman. THE THREE HUNDRED MEN THAT LAPPED (A Church Guild Sermon) ' And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand ; and let all the other people go every man unto his place.' — Judges vii. 7. Here is one of these battles of God which are being waged in century after century, crisis after crisis, by the armies of Truth against the hordes of unrighteousness. I. Gideon, trusting manfully in his Divine com- mission, sets himself to deliver Israel from the Midianites. Cheered himself by God's manifest good- ness he succeeds, as men count success, in gathering together a strong army. And what is the first 183 Ver. 7. JUDGES VII Ver. 13. message that reaches him from God as he has en- camped before the Midianites? 'The people that are with thee are too many.' So Gideon has to sub- mit there in the presence of the enemy with a tra- dition of disgrace behind him ; he, a leader of reputed cowards, has to submit to the departure of twenty- two thousand men, leaving his splendid band re- duced to a pitiable ten thousand. The fearful and the heavy-hearted go away and more than half his host has vanished. But what is this ? ' The people are yet too many,' is the inexorable decree of God. They must yet submit to another test. They are brought down to the water of Harod, near where they were encamped, to be tried with the test of thirst which has so often proved the value of disciplined troops. Some of them, the great majority, stooped down in their great eagerness to drink the water, the rest, a bare three hundred with splendid self-control, and a habit which showed that their minds were elsewhere, and that the coming battle was first in their thoughts, took up the water in their hands and lapped hurriedly, as if anxious not to lose a moment in self-indulgence. And the decree went forth ' By the three hundred that lapped I will save you '. II. (a) 'The three hundred men that lapped.' These are the sort of members that we want for a Church guild, for they represent in the first place a band of men who have learnt the great lesson of self- control. I know your trials here. I know that sparkling well of pleasure which runs through London, and I say that no member of any guild can take his place in the army of God who has not learned to taste with absolute self-control and resolute stead- fastness of purpose that which suffices for recreation, that which will supply him with the strength of joy. (6) ' The three hundred men that lapped.' They represented to Gideon also a band of enthusiasts. Only second in importance to the moral basis is the enthusiasm of right in the member of a guild. The guild member is serious, he is active, he is useful, because he has the enthusiasm of life, and even more because he has the enthusiasm of Christianity. He longs to help others, to be a centre of good, and a rallying point for the forces of the Lord. (c) ' The three hundred men that lapped.' Gideon might rely on these as determined men. A battle of three hundred against a host would need determined men, and the battle of the Lord needs determined men now. III. People tell us that the great battle is ap- proaching when on the one side will be ranged all that call on the Lord Jesus Christ as God, and on the other all who do not. But short of this, the conflict for each of us needs strength and determination of character. The real aim of a guild is to supply you with a rule of life, and a sense of fellowship in keep- ing that rule. You will want all the grimness of your will in the combat of life which lies before you. Moab lies in ambush with all his countless hosts, the battle will be hard and long, your strength will be to go into it pledged, pledged by your baptism, and vows made years and years ago over your unconscious infancy ; pledged by the same vows renewed by your own lips at the moment of your solemn confirmation, and now pledged by the rule of your guild. — W. C. E. Newbolt, Words of Exhortation, p. 339. References. — VII. 7. — J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon, p. 202. VII. 10.— J. W. Burgon, Servants of Scripture, p. 24. ' Behold, I dreamed a dream.' — Judges vii. 13. The machinery for dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one great tube through which man communicates with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connexion with the heart, the eye, and the ear, compose the magnificent apparatus which forces the infinite into the chambers of a human brain, and throws dark reflections from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of that mysterious camera obscura — the sleeping mind. — De Quincey. Only lightly and seldom did the Greeks and Romans dream : a distinct and vivid dream was with them an event to be recorded in their historical books. Real dreaming is first found among the ancient Jews. — Heine. A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD ' Behold, I dreamed a dream, and lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent and smote it that it fell.' — Judges vii. 13. Here we have a tiny nation oppressed by powerful neighbours. They have been maltreated by the oppressors, and at this, the darkest moment in the fortunes of Israel, a deliverer arises, not from among the leaders of the people, nor from those who stand in high places, but as has often been the case in his- tory, from the lower ranks themselves. Gideon is the hero in question. A man of the same stature and quality as Wallace and William Tell. Some one must have the courage to speak and to do something more than speak, some one must have the intrepidity to act, and Gideon thinks it may as well be he as any one else. So one morning credulous, self-in- dulgent Israel rises to see the God Baal hurled from his pedestal and helpless to avenge the affront. His next step is to consider whether Israel won back to the purer worship of Jehovah might not be delivered from the sword of the oppressor. His resolution once taken, this man arrives at the conclusion that he himself is the chosen of the Lord to do this work. But on the eve of the conflict he hesitates. He is self-distrustful. He goes down to listen and to spy within the camp of Midian itself and he hears one man tell his fellow a dream. A cake of barley bread tumbles into the camp of Midian, and smites a tent, and it falls and lies ruined before it. Gideon returns without a word. He takes it as a symbol, a sign that he, the chosen of the Lord, is already victor in the counsels of the Most High, and his decision and his act were one and the same. Why did this hero attach so much importance to this symbol ? It was 184 Ver. 17. JUDGES VII., VIII Ver. 21. the symbol of obscurity — Gideon himself was as a cake of barley bread, a labouring man called to be the instrument of God for the deliverance of his country. I. We have here a case in which a man with noth- ing to aid him but his sense of God and right essayed a seemingly hopeless task, and accomplished it. Such men are rare in history, but they have always been forthcoming when God wanted them. John Wycliffe, a poor scholar, ' The morning star of the Reforma- tion,' when princes and great nobles, not to speak of the common people, dared not raise their voice against the iniquity of Rome ; Martin Luther, the simple monk of Wittenberg, who tore half Christendom away from the See of St. Peter ; Hugh Latimer, an English yeoman, Reformation bishop, and martyr for all time ; John Wesley, the son of a clergyman, him- self a clergyman of the Church of England, too poor, sometimes, to pay his way almost, but the author of the greatest revival of modern times, whose followers have belted the globe with the story of the Gospel, was even refused a hearing in the Church he loved so well — a cake of barley bread against an army. II. I doubt not ; though perhaps they have never thought of it, there are some here who are the chosen of the Lord as much as Gideon, Luther, Wesley, only you were chosen for the day of small things. Is your vocation of any less value on that account ? Not in the least. You stand now as plainly outlined before the gaze of God and heaven as ever stood a John Wycliffe or a Martin Luther when fronting the in- quisitors and persecutors of old. You are fighting as great a battle as Gideon fought, as true a battle, and in the purpose of God it may be as worthy a conflict as ever he carried to a successful issue. — R. J. Camp- bell, Sermons Addressed to Individuals, p. 243. References. — VII. 13.— J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, p. 244 ; ibid. Sermons Preached in Sackoille College Chapel, vol. iii. p. 372. S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 77. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1873. VII. 13-23. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scrip- ture— Judges, p. 244. ' It shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do.' — Judges vii. 17. Is example nothing ? It is everything. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. — Burke. 'And of Gideon.' — Judges vii. 18. Set it downe to thyselfe, as well to create good Pre- sidents as to follow them. — -Bacon. For an extended popular movement a great name is like a consecrated banner. — George Meredith. References. — VII. 18. — Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects from the Old Testament, p. 54. VII. 19.— Christian World Pulpit, 10 Dec, 1890. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 413. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 264. VII. 19-25. — Ibid. Sermons, vol. xl. No. 2343. VIII. 1-27.— Ibid. ' Then their anger was abated toward him, when he had said that.' — Judges viii. 3. Sometimes men of great strength of will and purpose possess also in a high degree the gift of tact. ... In nearly all administrative posts, in all the many fields of labour where the task of man is to govern, manage, or influence others, to adjust or harmonize antagonism of race or interests or prejudices, to carry through difficult business without friction and by skilful co- operation, this combination of gifts is supremely valuable. — W. E. H. Lecky. ' Faint, yet pursuing.' — Judges viii. 4. In his Life of Coriolanus, Plutarch tells how the Roman troops rallied round M. Coriolanus in the attack upon the Volscians and drove the latter off in confusion. 'As they began to pursue them, they begged Marcius, now weary with toil and wounds, to retire to the camp ; but he, saying that " it was not for victors to be weary," joined in the pursuit. The rest of the Volscians were defeated, many were slain, and many taken.' Strength of endurance is worth all the talent in the world. — Byron. References. — VIII. 4. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xl. No. 2343. E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation (1st Series), p. 83. J. Baldwin Brown, The Higher Life, p. 288. ' I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers.' — Judges viii. 7. If a Te Deum or an 0, Jubilate were to be celebrated by all nations and languages for any one advance and absolute conquest over wrong and error won by human nature in our times — yes, not excepting The bloody writing by all nations torn — the abolition of the commerce in slaves — to my think- ing that festival should be for the mighty progress made towards the suppression of brutal, bestial modes of punishment. — De Quincey. Reference. — VIII. 18. — A. Gray, Faith and Diligence, p. 124. ' And he said unto Jether his firstborn, Up, and slay them. Then Zebah and Zalmunna said, Rise thou, and fall upon us : for as the man is, so is his strength.' — Judges viii. 20, 21. This passage is curiously applied by Cromwell in his fourth speech to the English Parliament of 1655, when bitterly denouncing the Anabaptist Levellers and their intrigues. These men, the Protector com- plains, ' have been and yet are endeavouring to put us into blood and into confusion ; more desperate and dangerous confusion than England ever yet saw. And I must say, as Gideon commanded his son to fall upon Zebah and Zalmunna, and slay them, they thought it more noble to die by the hand of a man than of a stripling — which shows there is some contentment in the hand by which a man falls ; so it is some satisfac- tion if a Commonwealth must perish, that it perish by men, and not by the hands of persons differing little from beasts ! ' AS THE MAN IS, SO IS HIS STRENGTH 'As the man is, so is his strength.'— Judges viii. 21 It is a strange and tragic history that of Gideon, the fifth, and for many reasons the greatest of all the 185 Ver. 33. JUDGES VIII., IX Vv. 17, 18. judges of Israel. Like many a wise saw of the olden times, the text contains much truth in small bulk. I. Plainly, the first meaning of it is, that as a man is physically so is his strength. Now, it is perfectly true that we cannot give to ourselves a handsome mien, nor add one cubit to our stature ; nevertheless, it is equally true — and of none more true than young men — that we can do much to promote our health, to build up our constitution, and even to give dignity to our physical presence. Given a smart and gentle- manly exterior, a young man's chances of preferment are decidedly greater, and the axiom generally holds good that, as a man is, even in outward physique, so is his success and strength. II. Take it in another way : as a man is intellectu- ally, so is his strength. I use the word 'strength' here as meaning power of work, capacity for accom- plishing the ends of life, and making the world the better for his existence. You want to have your eyes open and your wits awake ; to be sharp, and ready, and active. The quick-witted Jack will generally have the advantage over the slow-witted giant. The commerce of England is not indeed in the hands of scholars ; but it is, for the most part, in the hands of shrewd, clear-headed practical men, who understand their business, and know how to push it. Thus intel- lect becomes an equivalent of strength, mind means money. III. This old adage admits of a yet higher applica- tion. Indeed, in no sense is it more widely and markedly true than this ; as a man is morally and spiritually, so is his strength. Character and faith, more than anything else, determine your power of overcoming difficulty and of accomplishing good. This is the sure gauge of your personal force in society and in the world. Without a moral backbone you may as well be a jelly-fish, for any real, solid good you will accomplish. There must be a founda- tion of stern principle, or you will be weak as water. A man with a resolute conscience will always be a power. — J. Thain Davidson, The City Youth, p. 68. ' And it came to pass, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel turned again.' — Judges vih. 33. Writing to Mr. Cotton, a Boston minister, in 1651, Cromwell, after recounting the Puritan successes, adds significantly : ' We need your prayers in this as much as ever. How shall we behave ourselves after such mercies ? ' ' And the children of Israel remembered not the Lord their God, who had delivered them.' — Judges viii. 34. In his account of a Mr. Rowlandson, the old, avari- cious, and intemperate curate of Grasmere, Words- worth describes how ' one summer's morning, after a night's carouse in the vale of Langdale, on his return home, having reached a point near which the whole of the vale of Grasmere might be seen with the lake immediately below him, he stepped aside and sat down on the turf. After looking for some time at the landscape, then in the perfection of its morning beauty, he exclaimed — " Good God ! that I should have led so long a life in such a place ! " This, no doubt, was deeply felt by him at the time, but I am not authorized to say that any noticeable amendment followed.' A man would wonder to heare Men Professe, Protest, Engage, Give Great Wordes, and then Doe just as they have Done before. — Bacon. ' And he slew his brethren, being threescore and ten persons, upon one stone.' — Judges ix. 5. Where ambition hath possessed itself thoroughly of the soul, it turns the heart into steel, and makes it uncapable of a conscience. All sins will easily down with the man that is resolved to rise. — Bishop Hall. Reference. — IX. 8-15. — A. Raleigh, From Dawn to the Perfect Day, p. 132. ' The fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees ? ' — Judges ix. ii. A tallow dip, of the long-eight description, is an excellent thing in the kitchen candlestick, and Betty's nose and eye are not sensitive to the difference be- tween it and the finest wax ; it is only when you stick it in the silver candlestick, and introduce it into the drawing-room, that it seems plebeian, dim, and ineffectual. Alas for the worthy man who, like that candle, gets himself into the wrong place! — George Eliot, Amos Barton. Does he not drink more sweetly that takes his beverage in an earthen vessel, than he who looks and searches into his golden chalices, for fear of poison, and looks pale at every sudden noise, and sleeps in armour, and trusts no body, and does not trust God for his safety ? — Jeremy Tayix>r. Verily, I swear 'tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow. Anne Bullen in King Henry VIII. Reference. — IX. 14, 15. — C. F. Aked, The Courage of the Coward, p. 205. ' My father fought for you, and adventured his life far . . . and ye are risen up against my father's house this day.' — Judges ix. 17, 18. As I re-read the chapter of Judges — now, except in my memory, unread, as it chances, for many a year — the sadness of that story of Gideon fastens on me, and silences me. This the end of his angel visions, and dream-led victories, the slaughter of all his sons but this youngest — and he never again heard of in Israel. You Scottish children of the Rock, taught through all your once pastoral and noble lives by many a sweet miracle of dew on fleece and ground — once ser- vants of mighty kings and keepers of sacred covenant ; have you indeed dealt truly with your warrior kings and prophet saints ? — Ruskin in Proserpina. Reference. — IX. 48. — S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 270. 186 Ver. 53. JUDGES IX.-XI Vv. 34, 35. ' And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abime- lech's head, and all to break his skull.' — Judges ix. 53. There now lies the greatness of Abimelech ! — upon one stone had he slain his seventy brethren, and now a stone slays him.— Bishop Hall. ' And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord . . . and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord.' — Judges x. 6 and 10. The dark and the bright sides of the history shift with a rapidity unknown in the latter times of the story — ' The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord,' and ' The children of Israel cried unto the Lord '. Never was there a better instance than in these two alternate sentences, ten times repeated, that we need not pronounce any age entirely bad or entirely good. — Stanley. ' We have sinned : do Thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto Thee : deliver us only, we pray Thee, this day.' — Judges x. 15. It is possibly to this passage that Luther was allud- ing loosely in the following fragment of his Table- Talk : 'As I sometimes look through my fingers, when the tutor whips my son John, so it is with God ; when we are untruthful and disobedient to His word and commandments, He suffers us, through the devil, to be soundly lashed with pestilence, famine, and such-like whips ; not that He is our enemy, and to destroy us, but that through such scourging He may call us to repentance and amendment, and so allure us to seek Him, run to Him, and call upon Him for help. Of this we have a fine example in the book of Judges, when the angel, in God's person, speaks thus : I have stricken you so often, and ye are nothing the better for it. And the people of Israel said, Save Thou us but now : we have sinned and done amiss. Punish Thou us, O Lord, and do with us what Thou wilt, only save us now. Whereupon He struck not all the people to death.' ' And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the Lord : and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.' — Judges x. 16. I often went to bed with tears ; and after a sleepless night arose again with tears : I required some strong support ; and God would not vouchsafe it me, while I was running with the cap and bells. — Goethe in The Confessions of a Fair Saint. ' What man is he that will begin to fight against the children of Ammon?' — Judges x. 18. There was some juggling among the officials to avoid direct taxation ; and Pepys, with a noble im- pulse, growing ashamed of his dishonesty, designed to charge himself with £1000 ; but finding none to set him an example, ' nobody of our ablest merchants ' with their moderate liking for clean hands, he judged it ' not decent ' ; he feared it would ' be thought vain glory ' ; and, rather than appear singular, cheerfully remained a thief. One able merchant's countenance, and Pepys had dared to do an honest act ! Had he found one brave spirit, properly recognized by society, he might have gone far as a disciple. — R. L. Steven- son, Men and Books, p. 321. The key to all ages is — Imbecility ; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments ; victims of gravity, custom, and fear. This gives force to the strong, — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action. — Emerson. ' And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain.' — Judges xi. 6. When a subject presented itself so large and shape- less, and dry and thorny, that few men's fortitude could face, and no one's patience could grapple with it ; or an emergency occurred demanding, on a sudden, access to stores of learning, the collection of many long years, but arranged so as to be made available at the shortest notice — then it was men asked where Lawrence was. — Lord Brougham. ' And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The Lord be wit- ness between us, if we do not so according to thy words.' — Judges xi. 10. In a sermon preached at Fenwick in 1663, William Guthrie told his congregation : ' If you be not ashamed of Him and His word, He shall not be ashamed of you. We are in the case of the Gilead - ites, sore oppressed ; and Christ is Jephthah. He may say to us, as Jephthah did, Did you not hate Me, and expel Me out of My Father's house ? Why now come you to Me in your distress ? We must take with the charge, and put ropes on our necks, and still press our point on Him. Well, He says, if He deliver us or right our matters, shall He then be Head over us ? Let us all lay our hand to our heart this day. Dare we say as Gilead said, The Lord be witness between us if we do not according to Thy words ? Well then, here is the Covenant, and here I take instruments, and do append His seal to the Covenant. Now take your Sacrament upon this.' ' And Jephthah uttered all his words before the Lord in Mizpeh. — Judges xi. ii. Thomas Boston, in his Memoirs, describes a lengthy fast in which he reviewed his past life and renewed his vows to God. In the middle of the work, being exhausted, he desired some tokens from God of accept- ance. Two, he observes, ' were somewhat relieving unto me. One was that God knew the acceptance of His covenant, as above expressed, was the habitual bent of my heart and soul. . . . Another was that Scripture brought to my remembrance : and Jephthah uttered all his words before the Lord in Mizpeh. So I closed the work betwixt three and four o'clock in the afternoon.' ' Behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances ; and she was his only child : beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low.' — Judges xi. 34. 35- ' Now you read poetry, I daresay — what you call poetry,' said the old Dissenting preacher in The Re- volution in Tanner's Lane. ' I say in all of it — all, at least, I have seen — nothing comes up to that. She was his only child : beside her he had neither son 187 Vv. 39, 40. JUDGES XI.-XIII Vv. 22, 23. nor daughter. The inspired writer leaves the tact just as it stands, and is content. Inspiration itself can do nothing to make it more touching than it is in its own bare nakedness. There is no thought in Jephthah of recantation, nor in the maiden of revolt, but nevertheless he has his own sorrow. He is brought very low. God does not rebuke him for his grief. He knows well enough, my dear friends, the nature which He took upon Himself. He does not anywhere, therefore, I say, forbid that we should even break our hearts over those we love and lose. . . . He elected Jephthah to the agony he endured while she was away on the hills ! That is God's election, an election to the cross and to the cry, " Eli, Eli, lama Sabachthani ". " Yes," you will say, " but He elected him to the vic- tory over Ammon." Doubtless he did ; but what cared Jephthah for his victory over Ammon when she came to meet him, or indeed for the rest of his life ? What is a victory, what are triumphal arches and the praise of all creation, to a lonely man ? ' References. — XI. 35. — J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Pas- siontide, p. 328. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1341. ' And it was a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the . Gileadite.' — Judges xi. 39, 40. It is perhaps significant of Japanese married life that a Japanese bride goes to be married -in a pure white mourning robe, which is intended to signify that henceforth she is dead to her old home and her par- ents, and that she must henceforth look upon her husband's people as her own. But to the bride I think it must have a deeper significance. It must mean that she has said good-bye to all freedom and all family devotion, and to most of the pleasures of life : and that she has been disposed of to a man of whom she probably knows nothing, for him to use and abuse as the good or evil in him dictates. If ever the Japanese as a nation take to reading our Bible, the Japanese girl will make a god (not a god- dess) of Jephthah's daughter. A Japanese is called upon to perform the sacrifice of Jephthah when his daughter is married. — Miss Norma Lorimer in More Queer Things About Japan. ' Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth ; and he said, Sibboleth : for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him and slew him.' — Judges xh. 6. I can and do, in retrospect, sympathize heartily, tenderly, and reverentially with the Simeonite or Evangelical reaction. Not a stone would I dare to throw at the names of any of the good men who took part in it. But, at the same time, I know perfectly well that there is a type of character which never did, never will, perhaps, understand Evangelicism, but which is capable of religious faith acceptable to God, though innocent of Shibboleths ; and a type which could have found no shelter during (which I dare to call) the Sturm und Drang season of the Simeonite reaction, except in the bosom of the English Church. — W. B. Rands in Henry Holbeach, 11. pp. 44, 45. As it is the ear of fruit which distinguishes the wheat from the tares, so this is the true Shibboleth that He, who stands as Judge at the passages of Jordan, makes use of to distinguish those that shall pass over Jordan into the true Canaan from those that should be slain at the passage. For the Hebrew word Shibboleth signifies an ear of corn. And perhaps the more full pronunciation of Jephthah's friends, Shibboleth, may represent a full ear with fruit in it, typifying the fruits of the friends of Christ, the antitype of Jeph- thah ; and the more lean pronunciation of the Eph- ramites, his enemies, may represent their empty ears, typifying the show of religion in hypocrites without substance and fruit. — Jonathan Edwards in The Religious Affections. Reference. — XII. 6. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 269. 'And after him . . . and after him . . . and after him.' — Judges xii. 8, 11, 13. As one old statesman leaves the scene, a younger one comes forward, in the vigour of hope and power, to fill his place. When one great orator dies, another commonly succeeds him. The opportunity of the new aspirant is the departure of his predecessor ; on every vacancy some new claimant — many claim- ants probably — strive with eager emulation to win it and to retain it. Every loss is, in a brief period, easily and fully repaired. Even, too, in the heredi- tary part of our constitution, most calamities are soon forgotten. One monarch dies, and another succeeds him. A new court, a new family, new hopes and new interests, spring up and supersede those which have passed away. — Bagehot in The Econo- mist for December, 1801. Behold now, thou art barren ; but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son.' — Judges xiii. 3. A deep teaching lies in the Hebrew idea, recurrent in so many forms, and haunting the world of fairy- land and of legend, that the most precious gift of heaven must be long waited for. The late-born child is always the best beloved, the wondrously gifted, the miracle of strength, or the seer, who is to decide the fate of a nation. More or less, we see that the late-born is the precursor of the virgin- born. — Julia Wedgwood, Message of Israel, p. 142. References.— XIII. 16.— W. Ewen, Christian World Ptdpit, 1891, p. 328. XIII. 18-22.— J. Vaughan, Fifty Ser- mons (1874), p. 249. * The angel of the Lord did no more appear to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the Lord.' — Judges xiii. 21. The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand ; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. — George Eliot. A WOMAN'S LOQIC ' And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God. But his wife said, If the Lord were pleased to kill us He would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our hands, neither would He have showed us all these things, neither would He as at this time have told us such things as these.'— Judges xiii. 22, 23. We say usually that woman has instinct and man has logic. That is an ingenious definition to save 188 Vv. 22, 23. JUDGES XI 1 1., XIV Ver. 14. the masculine face. For really instinct is logic with- out its forms, and you have only to look at this text to see that the woman's instinct and logic are alike sound and convincing. I. The Promise in Nature. — Now let us first take this question : If the Lord had been pleased to kill us, would He have shown us all these things ? We may ask this question in respect of this present life, and its anxieties. We are often full of trouble about our future life in this world. We are full of mis- givings, full of solicitudes, full of apprehension. Now when we are thus tormented would it not be a good thing to put to ourselves : Would God have shown us all these things (these things that He is displaying to us, say, in this royal summer-time), would God have shown us all these wonderful things of our personal experience if He had meant to starve us, to degrade us, to forsake us, and leave us to nakedness and despair? All the riches and splen- dours of nature assure us that God is going to take care of us in the days to come as in the days that are past. II. The Promise in Life. — And you may take the same argument about the greater life beyond this world. We are doubtful sometimes, we are troubled with perplexities about the unknown future, and we are tempted to say that we shall perish utterly. If God had meant to destroy us would He have acted as He has with us, brought us into this world, and schooled us only to dismiss us to the dust ? After all the grandeur of the world of which we are the chief object, the splendour of our faculties, the excellence of our education, the rich treatment received at the hand of heaven, all declare that life has an immense perspective, that God is contem- plating generous things, and after laying His large foundations He is going to put on the superstructure and the topstone of perfection, of immortality. III. The Promise in Revelation. — Another question, Would the Lord have spoken to us all these things if He had meant to kill us ? He has not only shown us wonderful things, but He has spoken to us great words. God has not left Himself without witness ; from the beginning there have been His messengers speaking great words of light, of true righteousness, and hope to the various nations. And (depend upon it) God will continue to vindicate Himself and utter His great words. And what is all this for ? For what end ? Has God spoken to us through the Jewish nation, and spoken to us through His Son, and is it likely now that He is going to annihilate us, to desert us, to leave us in darkness and despair? It is not like Him. The very fact that He has spoken to us is full of promise and full of prophecy. IV. The Promise in Grace. — Finally, would God have shown us all the grace which He has shown us if He had meant to destroy us ? Think of what God has given us in His Son ; of the love He has expressed to us in His Gospel ! God has spoken words to you that He will justify and accomplish. — W. L. Watkinson, The Christian World Pulpit, Vol. lxv. 1904. References. — XIII. 22, 23. — H. J. Bevis, Sermons, p. 186. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, part i. p. 95. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1340. XIII. 23. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 440. XIII. 24. — I. Williams, Characters of the Old Testament, p. 149. XIII. 24, 25. — Bishop Alexander, The Great Question, p. 145. ' And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.' — Judges xiii. 25. Deeds of heroism are only offered to those who have been, for many long years, heroes in obscurity and silence. — Maeterlinck. History proves that the majority of men who have done anything great have passed their youth in seclu- sion.— Heine. Reference. — XIII. 25. — J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 97. 'And Samson went down to Timnath.'— Judges xiv. i. All transitions are dangerous ; and the most danger- ous is the transition from the restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world. — Herbert Spencer. Reference. — XIV. 4. — J. N. Norton, Golden Truths, p. 369. ' And, behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid.' — Judges xiv. 5, 6. God never gives strength, but he employs it. Poverty meets one like an armed man ; infamy, like some furious mastiff, comes flying in the face of another; the wild boar out of the forest, or the bloody tiger of persecution, sets on one ; the brawling curs of heretical pravity, or contentious neighbour- hood, are ready to bait another ; and by all these meaner and brutish adversaries, will God fit us for greater conflicts. It is a pledge of our future victory over the Philistines, if we can say, My soul hath been among lions. — Bishop Hall. Reference. — XIV. 8, 9. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1703. ' Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' — Judges xiv. 14. All over Normandy you come upon these fortified abbayes, built for praying and fighting once, and ruined now, and turned to different uses. It is like Samson's riddle to see the carcase of the lions with honey flowing from them. ' Out of the eater came forth meat ; out of the strong came forth sweetness.' There is a great archway at the farm at Tracy, with heavy wooden doors studded with nails. There is rust in plenty, and part of a moat still remaining. The hay is stacked in what was a chapel once ; the yellow trusses are hanging through the crumbling flamboyant east window. There is a tall watch-tower, to which a pigeon-cote has been affixed, and low cloisters that are turned into outhouses and kitchens. The white walls tell a story of penance and fierce battlings which are over now, so far as they are 189 Ver. 19. JUDGES XIV.-XVI Ver. 14 concerned. — From Miss Thackeray's The Village on the Cliff. In the fourth chapter of My Schools and School- masters, Hugh Miller tells how ' a party of boys had stormed a humble-bee's nest on the side of the old chapel-brae, and, digging inwards along the narrow winding earth passage, they at length came to a grin- ning human skull, and saw the bees issuing thick from out a round hole at its base — the foramen magnum. The wise little workers had actually formed their nest within the hollow of the head, once occupied by the busy brain ; and their spoilers, more scrupulous than Samson of old, who seems to have enjoyed the meat brought forth out of the eater, and the sweet- ness extracted from the strong, left in very great con- sternation their honey all to themselves.' Some of the loveliest of the works of man's hand seem to come out of utter foolishness and vileness, just as came honey from the carcass of Samson's lion. Even to exclude the later abomination of Greek sculpture, much of its true work was done in societies putrid to the core in public and private life. — Frederic Har- rison. Compare James Smetham on De Quincey : ' What a queer, mystic, sublime, inscrutable, fascinating old mummy he is ! Throw your mind back to the days when, fifty years or more ago, he wandered in London streets, and what he says of himself in the Confessions then, and fancy that he has lasted on till now, and is winking and blinking yet. . . . Now the fact is, that man has wasted his life ; and one can only, in one's soul, use him as Samson used the honey out of the dead lion — " Out of the strong came forth sweetness ".' Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson ; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them, we shall find a nest of honey within them. — Bunyan, Grace Abounding. In his essay on 'The Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places,' R. L. Stevenson tells how once in a cold, bleak, Northern district he received some singularly pleasurable impressions, owing to the discipline of having to hunt out what was good amid the uncon- genial surroundings. ' And this happened to me in the place of all others where I liked least to stay. When I think of it, I grow ashamed of my own in- gratitude. " Out of the strong came forth sweetness." There, in the bleak and gusty North, I received, per- haps, my strongest impression of peace. I saw the sea to be great and calm ; and the earth, in that little corner, was all alive and friendly to me. So, wherever a man is, he will find something to please and pacify him ... let him only look for it in the right spirit, and he will surely find.' 'And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him.' — Judges xiv. 19. Some one once asked Luther what was the difference between Samson and Julius Caesar, or any famous general who had been endowed with a vigorous body and a vigorous mind. The Reformer answered ; ' Samson's strength was produced by the Holy Ghosl animating him, lor the Holy Ghost enables those whc serve God obediently to accomplish great exploits The strength and grandeur of soul of the heather were also an inspiration and work of God, but not oi the kind which sanctifies. I often reflect with admira tion upon Samson. Mere human strength could never have done what he did.' I confess there are, in Scripture, stories that do ex- ceed the fables of poets, and, to a captious reader sound like Gargantua or Bevis. Search all the legends of times past, and the fabulous conceits oi these present, and 'twill be hard to find one that de- serves to cany the buckler to Samson ; yet is all this of an easy possibility, if we conceive a Divine concourse or an influence from the little finger of the Almighty — Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici. ' And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.' — Judges xv. 15. Is it fair to call the famous Drapier's Letters patriot- ism ? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective : they are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy — the assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rushing on his enemies and felling them : one admires not the cause so much as the strength, the anger, the fury of the champion. — Thackeray upon Swift. References. — XV. 15-19. — S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 38. XVI. 3. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. lii. No. 3009. ' And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.' — Judges xvi. 4. In the preface to The Character of the Happy Warrior, Wordsworth notes that ' the cause of the great war with the French naturally fixed one's attention upon the military character, and, to the honour of our country, there were many illustrious instances of the qualities that constitute its highest excellence. Lord Nelson carried most of these virtues that the trials he was exposed to in his de- partment of the service necessarily call forth and sustain, if they do not produce the contrary vices. But his public life was stained with one great crime, so that, though many passages of these lines were suggested by what was generally known as excellent in his conduct, I have not been able to connect his name with the poem as I could wish, or even to think of him with satisfaction in reference to the idea of what a warrior ought to be.' 'And he awaked.' — Judges xvi. 14. Methbjks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks : methinks I see her as an eagle renewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain 190 Ver. 20. JUDGES XVI Vv. 21, 22. itself of heavenly radiance ; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms. — Milton, Areopagitica. To the history of Samson, one of his favourite Scriptures, Milton returns in his Reasons of Church Government, where he frequently compares the Hebrew champion's career and character to the rulers. ' I cannot better liken the state and person of a king than to that mighty Nazarite, Samson ; who, being disciplined from his birth in the precepts and the practice of temperance and sobriety, grows up to a noble strength and perfection, with those his illustri- ous locks, the Laws, waving and curly about his godlike shoulders. And, while he keeps them un- diminished and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an ass, that is, with the word of his meanest officer, suppress and put to confusion thousands of those that rise against his just power. But laying down his head amongst the strumpet flatteries of prelates, while he sleeps and thinks no harm, they, wickedly shaving off" all those bright and weighty tresses of his laws and just prerogatives, which were his ornament and strength, deliver him over to in- direct and violent counsels, which, as those Philistines, put out the fair and far-sighted eyes of his natural mind, and make him grind in the prison house of their sinister ends, and practise upon him ; till he, knowing this prelatical razor to have bereft him of his wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair, the golden beams of law and right, and they, sternly shook, thunder with ruin upon the heads of those his evil counsellors, but not without great affliction to himself.' References.— XVI. 17.— H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 1111. XVI. 20. — R. J. Campbell, Sermons Addressed to Individuals, p. 73. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 413. W. J. Bach, A Book of Lay Sermons, p. 247. S. Baring-- Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 121. XVI. 20, 21. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 224. A FORFEITED QIFT 1 He wist not that the Lord had departed from him.'— Judges XVI. 20. I. The fall and the death of Samson are illustrative of a recurrent human experience. Unfaithfulness to a Divine gift results in its withdrawal. In a sense all men are divinely gifted, though their gifts differ both in quality and in degree, which is precisely what we ought to expect. Suppose Samson had lived and died like the great lawgiver of Israel — who can think about Moses without believing his estimate of manhood is better for that life? Joshua, who, inspired by a greater than himself, hearing his Divine call, ' Moses my servant is dead, now therefore arise,' rose captain Df Israel, faithful to the call, was faithful to the last, in his dying hour calling Israel before him. ' Choose you this day whom ye will serve.' Elijah, the most picturesque of them all, a solitary figure in a decadent age, defying all the untoward tendencies of his time, witnessing for God and in the sublimity of his death impressing Israel for good like Samson, but oh, in what a different fashion ! Suppose that Samson's life and death had been as these — for he was called to the first place just as these were ? He had his opportunity and he put it away. II. Vocation may be forfeited, and there is no tragedy so sad, no end so melancholy, as that in which a man discovers that he has been living for long without God and without the gift that ought to have led him to great things. You have had your gracious oppor- tunity, your season of vision, and whatever kind of man you are it will be of no use to you in the great day of reckoning for you to deny the moment when the opportunity came. Do we know the opportunity when it comes ? Are we clear as to the moment when we stop our ears and close our eyes and turn our feet from the pathway of duty ? You know perfectly well if this gift that is in you is debased, and when you know it you have rightly j udged in the day of dread discovery that the Spirit of the Lord has de- parted. III. It is sometimes said that the word of the prophet has no hearing in these days. Men are in- different to the claims of the Christ. God has but little place in their lives. Now, is it true of the men who reject God and Christ, and the Bible, and with it all the ideals and associations that belong of right thereto — is it true that they are living the life of the highest they can see ? When you exchanged something else for Christ, did you choose a higher or did you choose a lower ? If you choose a lower, put- ting from you the higher, on whatever hypocritical pretext your choice was made, you did it knowingly, and you forfeited a great opportunity and you thrust from you the Divine gift. Recognize that the Divine gift rests upon you for just what you are and where you are, and that it can be withdrawn, and it may be so. You are not living to your highest, and yet you could in the strength of the Lord God. — R. J. Campbell, Sermons Addressed to Individuals, p. 73. ' And the Philistines put out his eyes.' — Judges xvi. 21. His eyes were the first offenders, which betrayed him to lust ; and now they are first pulled out. ... It is better for Samson to be blind in prison than to abuse his eyes in Sorek : yea I may safely say, he was more blind when he saw licentiously, than now that he sees not ; he was a greater slave when he served his affections, than now in grinding for the Philistines. The loss of his eyes shows him his sin ; neither could he see how ill he had done, till he saw not. — Bishop Hall. ' And he did grind in the prison house. Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again.' — Judges xvi. 21, 22. Samson's hair grew again, but not his eyes. Time may restore some losses, others are never to be re- paired.— Thomas Fuller. In his fifth lecture on Heroes, Carlyle applies this incident to Benthamism, which, he avers, 'you may call heroic, though a Heroism with its eyes put out. 191 Ver. 25. JUDGES XVI Ver. 28. It is the culminating point, and fearless ultimatum, of what lay in the half-and-half state, pervading man's whole existence in that eighteenth century. It seems to me, all deniers of Godhood, and all lip-believers of it, are bound to be Benthamites, if they have courage and honesty. Benthamism is an eyeless Heroism : the Human species, like a hapless, blinded Samson, grinding in the Philistine Mill, clasps con- vulsively the pillars of its Mind ; brings huge ruin down, but ultimately deliverance withal.' Those who would take away the use of our reason in spiritual things would deal with us as the Philistines did with Samson — first, put out our eyes, and then make us grind in their mill. — John Owen. Ruskin, in the fifth volume of Modern Painters, asks, How did the art of the Venetians ' so swiftly pass away ? How become, what it became unquestionably, one of the chief causes of the corruption of the mind of Italy, and of her subsequent decline in moral and political power ? By reason of one great, one fatal fault — recklessness in aim. Wholly noble in its sources, it was wholly unworthy in its purposes. Separate and strong, like Samson, chosen from its youth, and with the Spirit of God visibly resting on it, — like him, it warred in careless strength, and wan- toned in untimely pleasure.' In his essay on Old Mortality, Stevenson describes the career of a brilliant, soulless, fellow-undergradu- ate, ' most beautiful in person, most serene and genial by disposition ... a noble figure of youth, but follow- ing vanity and incredulous of good ; and sure enough, somewhere on the high seas of life, with his health, his hopes, his patrimony, and his self-respect, he miser- ably went down. . . . Thus was our old comrade, like Samson, careless in the days of his strength.' References.— XVI. 21. — J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (2nd Series), p. 89. XVI. 21-31. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Judges, p. 250. XVI. 22. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1939. ' And they called for Samson out of the prison house, and he made them sport' — Judges xvi. 25. Compare Carlyle's grim description of British opera. ' One singer in particular, called Coletti or some such name, seemed to me, by the cast of his face, by the tones of his voice, by his general bearing, so far as I could read it, to be a man of deep and ardent sensi- bilities, of delicate intuitions, just sympathies ; origin- ally an almost poetic soul, or man of genius, as we term it ; stamped by Nature as capable of far other work than squalling here, like a blind Samson, to make the Philistines sport.' HOW NOT TO PRAY ' Only this once.' — Judges xvi. 28. We have heard these words until we are heartsick of them. There are some words we cannot do without ; we know they are lies, we mean them at the time, or at least we think we mean them ; and lo, in a little while the remembrance utterly fades, and we come back upon the old spot with the old hammer, with a false repercussion, with a smiting that we promised should never be renewed. Samson would gather himself up for a grand final effort ; he said in effect, O Lord, the Philistines have taken away mine eyes, I am no longer what I was, I am no longer a prophet and servant of Thine, I am no longer a judge in the country, I am a poor fool ; I gave up my secret, I was fallen upon by cruel wretches, they are laughing at me and mocking me with a most bitter sarcasm ; Lord, remember the old days, direct my hands, some of you, to the pillars on which this house stands, and now, Lord, this once, the last time, give me back the old Samson, and I will tear these Philistines down as a palace might be torn down by an earthquake : Lord, this once, only this once ; I pray Thee let the old strength come back, and I will be avenged for my two eyes. It was very natural, it was most human, it was just what we would have done under similar circumstances, and therefore do not let us laugh at the dismantled giant. Let us accommodate the passage, so that it may become a lamp which we can hold over various points of life. I. Now let us note three things about this prayer. First of all, the prayer was to the true God. It was not offered to an idol or to a graven image of any kind or to a mere filmy ideality, a shadowy half- something that was wraith-like, apparitional, but not nameable or not approachable in any suitable and substantial way. This prayer went up directly in the line of the true throne. It was the Lord God of Israel, it was the cry of necessity to the Giver of all good. Know then that we may be praying to the right God ; that is no guarantee that we shall get the answer which we desire. II. What ailed this poor prayer? what was its mortal disease? The mortal disease of this prayer uttered by Samson was that it was offered in the wrong spirit. It is the spirit that determines the quality. ' That I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.' It was a prayer for vengeance. That prayer comes easily to the natural spirit. We love to magnify the individual, and to think that individualism is personality. Prayer is self- slaughter, in so far as the will and the supreme desire of the heart may be concerned. Prayer is self-re- nunciation ; prayer says, Lord, Thy will be done, not mine. Thus the Divine will is done by consent human and Divine, and is the law, in its own degree of the universe ; the soul then falls into the rhythmic move- ment of the creation, and the man is translated out of individuality into personality in its broadest de- finitions, and he is part and parcel of the great unity which swings like a censer round the altar Divine. III. In the third place this prayer was answered, but answered in j udgment. Samson had his way, but his way killed him. We will not say anything about Samson's character, we have too much to say about our own ; it does not do to stretch our hands across the centuries that we may smite some downtrodden man, but we must begin at the house of God. The 192 Vv. 29, 30. JUDGES XVI.-XVIII Ver. 7. judgment must begin in every man's own secret soul. But this we may say ; for the eternal comfort of the race it is written according to the blessing pronounced by father Jacob, ' Gad, a troop shall overcome him : but he shall overcome at the last '. So we come upon the familial- thought of intermediate and final victories. We were caught in all the sins ; the decalogue was flying round us in splintered, shattered pieces, the devil was triumphing over us, but we overcame at the last. It was a long time in coming, but the purpose of God cannot be set aside, and if we diligently, humbly, and reverently entreat the Divine presence, and if we be heartily ashamed of our sins, and name them one by one in the face of the noonday sun, and smite upon our hearts and say, ' All these sins are ours, and we repent them,' who can tell whether God will be gracious unto us, and give us a nail in His tabernacle, and one small place in His great provi- dential plan ? — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. in. p. 32. 1 And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars . . . and he bowed himself with all his might ; and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people that were therein.' — Judges xvi. 29, 30. In his introduction to Woolman's Journal Whittier has occasion to speak of the magnitude of that evil which Woolman set himself to grapple. The slave- trade had rooted itself in all departments of American life. ' Yet he seems never to have, doubted for a moment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitated as to his own duty in regard to it. There was no groping like Samson in the gloom ; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of the temple of Dagon. . . . He believed in the good- ness of the Lord that leadeth to repentance ; and that love could reach the witness for itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of custom and every barrier of pride and selfishness.' Death is no such terrible enemie, when a man hath so many attendants about him, than can winne the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over Death ; Love slights it ; Honour aspireth to it ; Grief flieth to it. — Bacon. References. — XVI. 30. — ■ Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 253. A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 274. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iii. p. 388. ' And he judged Israel twenty years.' — Judges xvi. 31. A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the candle. ... It is neither the first nor last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two — not our exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think, while here — that we are to attend to, in pronouncing sentence upon it. — Hazlitt. ' Silent was that house of many chambers,' writes Mr. Meredith of Lassalle. ' That mass of humanity, profusely mixed of good and evil, of generous ire and mutinous, of the passion for the future of man- kind and vanity of person, magnanimity and sensual- ism, high judgment, reckless indiscipline, chivalry, savagely, solidity, fragmentariness, was dust. He perished of his weakness, but it was a strong man that fell. His end was a derision because the animal in him ran him unchained and bounding to it. A stormy blood made wreck of a splendid intelligence.' References. — XVI. 31. — Bishop Alexander, The Great Question, p. 145. XVII. 3. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 261. ' I am a Levite, and I go to sojourn where I may find a place. And Micah said unto him, Dwell with me, and be unto me a father and a priest, and I will give thee ten shekels of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel, and thy victuals. So the Levite went in. And the Levite was content to dwell with the man.' — Judges xvii. 9-11. After that first fervour of simple devotion, which his beloved Jesuit priest had inspired in him, speculative theology took but little hold on the young man's mind. When his early credulity was disturbed, and his saints and virgins taken out of his worship, to rank little higher than the divinities of Olympus, his belief became acquiescence rather than the ardour ; and he made his mind up to assume the cassock and bands, as another man does to wear a breast-plate and jack-boots, or to mount a merchant's desk, for a liveli- hood, and from obedience and necessity, rather than from choice. There were scores of such men in Mr. Esmond's time at the universities, who were going into the Church with no better calling than his. — Thackeray, Esmond, chap. rx. In The Force of Truth, Thomas Scott confesses that his original views in entering the ministry ' were these three : — A desire of a less laborious and more com- fortable way of procuring a livelihood, than otherwise I had the prospect of ; the expectation of more leisure to employ in reading, of which I was inordinately fond ; and a proud conceit of my abilities, with a vainglorious imagination that I should sometime dis- tinguish and advance myself in the literary world.' ' And they said unto him, Who brought thee hither ? and what makest thou in this place ? and what hast thou here ? ' — Judges xviii. 3. ' It is a vain thought,' says Dinah Morris in Adam Bede, ' to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the fullness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found, in loving obedience.' 'They dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure ; and there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame in any thing.' — Judges xviii. 7. A man's own safety is a god that sometimes makes very grim demands. — George Eliot. Security, as commonly understood, is the state in which one fears no danger, where one is cheerful and hopes the best. We all begin our life in security. . . . We are all born optimists. — Martensen. There are a multitude of persons who go through life in a safe, uninteresting mediocrity. They have 193 13 Ver. 19. JUDGES XVIII.-XXI Ver. 3. never been exposed to temptation ; they are not troubled with violent passions ; they have nothing to try them ; they have never attempted great things for the glory of God ; they have never been thrown upon the world ; they live at home in the bosom of their families, or in quiet situations . . . and when their life is closed, people cannot help speaking well of them, as harmless, decent, correct persons, whom it is impossible to blame, impossible not to regret. Yet, after all, how different then* lives are from that de- scribed as a Christian's life in St. Paul's Epistles ! — Newman. References. — XVIII. 7, 27, 28. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2490. XVIII. 9, 10.— J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 330. 'Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth.'— Judges xviii. ig. So, in almost the same words, was the like bribe offered by one of the great religious houses of Eng- land to the monk who guarded the shrine of one of the most sacred relics in the adjacent cathedral of Canterbury — ' Give us the portion of St. Thomas's skull which is in thy custody, and thou shalt cease to be a simple monk ; thou shalt be Abbot of St. Augus- tine's.' As Roger accepted the bait in the twelfth century after the Christian era, so did the Levite of Micah's house in the fifteenth century before it. — Stanley. 'And the priest's heart was glad, and he went' — Judges XVIII. 20. He that was won with ten shekels may be lost with eleven. . . . There is nothing more inconstant than a Levite that seeks nothing but himself. — Bishop Hall. Reference. — XVIII. 24. — S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 109. ' And they came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and secure : and they smote them with the edge of the sword. ' — Judges xviii. 27. When a Warre"-like State growes Softe and Effemin- ate, they may be sure of a Warre. For commonly such States are growne rich, in the time of their de- generating: and so the Prey inviteth, and their Decay in Valour encourageth a Warre. — Bacon. ' And a certain Levite took to him a concubine out of Beth- lehem-judah.' — Judges xix. i. On the night before he fled from Geneva, Rousseau relates how finding himself unusually wakeful, ' I continued my reading beyond my usual hour, and read the whole passage ending at the story of the Levite of Ephraim — in the book of Judges, if I mis- take not, for since then I have never seen it. This story made a great impression on me, and in a kind of dream my imagination still ran upon it.' Suddenly wakened by the news that his ]£mile was proscribed, he drove off, and composed, during his journey, a version of this barbaric tale. ' And, behold, there came an old man from his work out of the field at even.' — Judges xix. 16. I heae but of one man at his work in all Gibeah ; the rest were quaffing and revelling. That one man ends his work with a charitable entertainment ; the others end their play in a brutish beastliness and violence. — Bishop Hall. Reference. — XIX. 20. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Common Life Religion, p. 232. ' And the men of Israel turned again upon the children of Ben- jamin, and smote them with the edge of the sword, as well the men of every city, as the beast, and all that came to hand.' — Judges xx. 48. ' Humanity, or mercy, is certainly not the strong point of Achaian Greeks. With them not only no sacred- ness, but little value, attached to human life ; and the loss of it stirs no sympathy unless it be associated with beauty, valour, patriotism, or other esteemed characteristics. Yet here, again, the forms of evil are less extreme. We do not find, even in the stern, relentless vengeance of Odysseus on his enemies, or in the passionate wish of Achilles that nature would permit what it forbade, namely, to devour his hated foe, a form of cruelty and brutality .so savage as is recorded in the case of the Levite with his wife and concubine at Gibeah, and of the war which followed it. — W. E. Gladstone. ' O Lord God of Israel, why should there be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel ?' — Judges xxi. 3. If there were no fault in their severity, it needed no excuse : and if there were a fault, it will admit of no excuse : yet, as if they meant to shift off the sin, they expostulate with God, ' O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass this day ! ' God gave them no command of this rigour ; yea he twice crost them in the execution ; and now, in that which they en- treated of God with tears, they challenge Him. It is a dangerous injustice to lay the burden of our sins upon Him, which tempteth no man, nor can be tempted with evil ; while we so remove one sin, we double it. — Bishop Hall. THE MISSING ONE ' O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel.' — Judges xxi. 3. This inquiry represents the spirit of the whole Bible. I. Look at this text as a sentiment, a discipline, as an encouragement. Is not this the human aspect of the solicitude of God's heart ? In this respect as well as in others is man made after the image and likeness of God. There is what may be called a distinct unity of emotion — call it pity, solicitude, compassion, or by any other equal term — running through the whole Bible. From the first God loved man with atoning and redeeming love. Marvellous and instructive as is the development of the Bible history, in all the in- finite tumult God looks after the sinner, the wanderer, with longing love. II. But, from another point of view, how different the text. This high feeling has also a disciplinary aspect, and therefore there is a whole field of complete and ardent loyalty. When Deborah sang her triu m ph- ant song she disclosed the sterner aspect of this case 194 Ver. 21. JUDGES XXI Ver. 25. She mentioned the absentees by name, and consigned them to the withering immortalities of oblivion. ' Reuben remained among the sheep-folds ' when he ought to have answered the call of the trumpet. Why was he lacking in that day ? He was pre-occupied ; he sent promises, but he remained at home among the flocks. III. Some are no longer in the battle, yet to-day are not lacking in the sense of the text. They are not here — they are here. Even the mighty David waxed faint. He was but seventy when he died. — Joseph Parker. ' If the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards.' — Judges xxi. 21. Speaking, in Time and Tide, of the ancient religious use of dance and song, as in this passage, where the feast of the vintage is marked by thanksgiving, Ruskin contrasts it with a Swiss scene of vulgar riot which he once witnessed in the autumn of 1863, when the Zurich peasantry abandoned themselves to ' two cere- monies only. During the day, the servants of the farms, where the grapes had been gathered, collected in knots about the vineyards, and slowly fired horse- pistols, from morning to evening. At night they got drunk, and staggered up and down the hill paths, uttering, at short intervals, yells and shrieks, differing only from the howling of wild animals by a certain intended and insolent discordance, only attainable by the malignity of debased human creatures. . . . Note this, respecting what I have told you, that in the very centre of Europe, in a country which is visited for their chief pleasure by the most refined and thought- ful persons among Christian nations — a country made by God's hand the most beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half-way towards the beasts.' ' In those days there was no king in Israel : every man did that which was right in his own eyes.' — Judges xxi. 25. ' From a combination of causes,' says Mr. Froude in his Annals of an English Abbey, ' we are now pass- ing into a sea where our charts fail us, and the stars have ceased to shine. The tongue of the prudent speaks stammeringly. The fool clamours that he is as wise as the sage, and the sage shrinks from saying that it is not so. Authority is mute. One man, we are told, is as good as another : each by Divine charter may think as he pleases, and carve his actions after his own liking. Institutions crumble ; creeds resolve themselves into words ; forms of government disinte- grate, and there is no longer any word of command. . . . Civilized mankind are broken into two hundred million units, each thinking and doing what is good in his own eyes. ' Experience of the past forbids the belief that anarchy will continue for ever.' Reference. — XXI. 25.— H. Hensley Henson, Light and Heaven, p. 87. 195 RUTH RUTH References. — I. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No. 2746, I. -IV.— B. Griffith Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. 1899, p. 42. I. 1-5.— S. Cox, The Book of Ruth, p. 43. 1 And they took them wives of the women of Moab ; the name of the one was Or pah, and the name of the other Ruth.' — Ruth i. 4. We strain our eyes to know something of the long line of the purple hills of Moab, which form the background at once of the history and of the geo- graphy of Palestine. It is a satisfaction to feel that there is one tender association which unites them with the familiar history and scenery of Judaea — that from their recesses, across the deep gulf which separ- ates the two regions, came the gentle ancestress of David and the Messiah. — Stanley. References.— I. 6-22.— S. Cox, The Book of Ruth, p. 63. I. 8. — W. M. Statham, Outlines of Sermons on the Old Testa- ment, p. 60. ' It grieveth me much for your sakes, that the hand of the Lord is gone out against me.' — Ruth i. 13. Good dispositions love not to pleasure themselves with the disadvantage of others ; and had rather be miser- able alone, than to draw in partner's to their sorrow. . . . As, contrarily, ill minds care not how many companions they have in misery ; if themselves mis- carry, they could be content if all the world were enwrapped with them in the same distress. — Bishop Hall. ' And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law ; but Ruth clave unto her.' — Ruth i. 14. Perplexed Naomi, torn with contrary feelings ; which tried her the more — Orpah who left her, or Ruth who remained ? Orpah who was a pain,;or Ruth who was a charge ? — Newman. ' Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people and unto her gods ; return thou after thy sister-in-law.' — Ruth 1. 15. Orpah kissed Naomi and went back to the world. There was sorrow in the parting, but Naomi's sorrow was more for Orpah's sake than for her own. Pain there would be, but it was the pain of a wound, not the yearning regret of love. It was the pain we feel when friends disappoint us and fall in our esteem. That kiss of Orpah was no loving token ; it was but the hollow profession of those who use smooth words, that they may part company with us, with least trouble and discomfort to themselves. Orpah's tears were but the dregs of affection ; she clasped her mother-in-law once for all, that she might not cleave to her. — New- man. References. — I. 16. —Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2680. J. McNeill, Regent Square Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 185. I. 16, 17.— C. Bickersteth, The Shunammite, p. 47. I. 16-22.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, etc., p. 259. STEADFASTLY MINDED *- 'Steadfastly minded.'— Ruth i. 18. I. As we read the simple Bible story, how does the beauty of the character of that Moabitish woman at- tract us ? Her gentleness, love, faithfulness, courage, industry, patience, obedience — all stand out before us and win us. They were found in her in the various circumstances which drew them forth because she was ' steadfastly minded '. II. ' Steadfastly minded,' there was the secret of her noble life. What a contrast with her sister Orpah, weeping, kissing, but going back, or with Saul, im- patient, unable to wait God's time, breaking His commandment, and falling lower and lower into sin. ' Steadfastly minded,' you all recognize the importance of this in earthly things ; you know that a man who enters upon any work, or business, or profession, with only half his heart in it, never really succeeds — is never really happy in it. Steadfastness leads to self-denial, energy, perseverance, effort, pressing on ; and therefore in all earthly things we recognize its value and import- ance ; and we know that certain failure sooner or later awaits those who lack it. III. The things which concern your never-dying souls, on which such infinite, eternal destinies depend, surely here, above all, is it necessary that all should be steadfastly minded, and no less so, that there must be continual self-denial. We must take up our cross daily, and follow in the road that is so narrow, through the battle that is so hard, and the dangers that are so many, until we receive the crown that is so glorious. — W. Howell Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 167. FROM PLEASURE TO AFFLICTION 'Call me not Naomi, call me Mara.' — Ruth i. 20. Ten years form a considerable portion of every man's life. Ten years in sharp conflict with the world, its labours, laws, and ways, will give a man a very different opinion of life to what he entertained in the days of his youth. When he took his departure into the far- off land to seek a place in the battle of life, he was carried along with the crowd of money-getters, plea- sure-seekers, and ambition-hunters, and at the end of ten years, if not before, he will be ready to admit that affliction, barrenness, and want, underlie all its outward glory and tempting delight. Ten years will be enough to change its pleasant things into bitterness, to blunt the keen zest for life, and it may be, under God's grace, to bring back the soul from the land of bondage, and 196 Ver. 20. RUTH I., II Ver. 8. to fill it with a sense of the great importance of living for that which is beyond. Man goes away, God brings home. The departure into Moab is all our own, but the return is His with Whom we have to do. ' Call me not Naomi, call me Mara.' Call me not Naomi the pleasant one, but Mara the bitter one, ' for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty.' I. Is not this the Cry of many a Heart? — Is not this the sad experience of thousands who have drunk deeply at life's fountain ? The far-off land of worldliness in which I dwelt has yielded only barren- ness and want. My years have been wasted, my opportunities lost, and that which seemed sweet and pleasant has turned to bitterness. I have mourning for mirth, dishonour for honour, sour for sweet. Oh, had I served my God with the zeal I served the world, I would not have to mourn a past that has been, as far as my eternal interests are concerned, a failure ! ' Call me not Naomi, call me Mara.' II. But after all, as Regards this Life, is it not better to be called Mara than Naomi ? — Is there nothing good in this change of name ? Does Mara bring more future blessedness than Naomi ? Well, for life to be pleasant and sweet to a man he must have his own way. He must be at full liberty to select his studies, pursuits, pleasures, companions. He cannot endure to be disappointed, thwarted, foiled. He must enter the land of Moab and drink deeply of its snares and lusts and temptations. And what is the inevit- able result? In his abundance be forgets the God Who giveth all, and Who intended all to be used in a different way, and for another purpose. But when disappointment, failure, affliction, confront him, then they reveal to him that life was never intended for him to have his own way. Naomi is changed into Mara, pleasant into bitter, and he beholds tyo wills in conflict, Divine and human, God's and his. He has been walking in the light of his own eyes, and not after the will of the Almighty. He sees that if he pursues this course the conflict must end, as far as he is concerned, in future and unutterable loss. See- ing- the vanity and emptiness of earthly things, he comes to himself, he discovers that it is far better to submit his will to God's. There is a returning from the land of Moab unto his Father's house. III. When the Change comes, when Naomi be- comes Mara, what is our Work ? — To come out of Moab. To leave the vain and empty surroundings, which in the past have proved such an attraction to us. For Naomi there was no rest, no comfort, no profit in Moab. Its sweetness had become bitter. Enjoyment had gone, wealth had vanished, and, like the prodigal of old, she came to herself, she remem- bered that there was enough and to spare in the Father's house, and so she arose with her daughters- in-law that she might return. From sorrow to re- pentance, bitterness to decision. Moab had become distasteful, she will arise and depart to the old home of childhood and youth. Whereupon ' she went forth out of the place'. Thus, when God in His mercy wakens up in us a sense of the vanity and emptiness of life, turns its sweet into bitter, let us depart from that which holds us earth-bound, and, while accepting the change in our lot with patience and resignation, let us struggle to rise from the lowness and deadness around us, to the earnestness and newness of life. References. — I. 20. — C. Leach, Mothers of the Bible, p. 107. I. 20, 21.— T. Snape, A Book of Lay Sermons, p. 33. II. 1-23.— S. Cox, The Book of Ruth, p. 83. II. 3, 4.— J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 346. II. 4. — F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. ii. p. 201. ' Plain Sermons ' by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. vi. p. 197. ' Let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.' — Ruth ii. 7. I do not hear Ruth stand upon the terms of her better education, or wealthy parentage; but now that God hath called her to want, she scorns not to lay her hand unto all homely services, and thinks it no disparagement to find her bread in other men's fields. — Bishop Hall. ' American girls,' says Mr. Kipling in From Sea to Sea (i. p. 6), 'develop greatly when a catastrophe arrives, and the man of many millions goes up or goes down, and his daughters take to stenography or typewriting. I have heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted the principals among their friends. The crash came : Mamie or Hattie or Sadie gave up their maid, their carriages and candy, and with No. 2 Remington and a stout heart set about earning their daily bread.' Working in the quiet village, or in the distant field, women may be as pure and modest, men as high- minded and well-bred, and both as full of the fear of God, and the thought that God's eye is upon them, as if they were in a place or station where they had nothing to do but to watch over the salvation of their own souls ; the meadow and the harvest-field need not be, as they too often are, places for tempta- tion and defilement, where the old too often teach the young not to fear God and keep themselves pure, but to copy their coarse jests and foul language, and listen to stories which had better be buried for ever in the dirt out of which they spring. You know what I mean. You know what field-work too often is. Read the book of Ruth, and see what field-work may be and ought to be. — Charles Kingsley. Reference. — II. 7. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Ser- monettes for a Year, p. 220. THE DUTY OF GLEANING (Harvest Festival) ' Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Hearest thou not, my daughter ? Go not to glean in another field, neither go from nence, but abide here fast by my maidens.' — Ruth ii. 8. Boaz in this book is a type of Christ, and Ruth is the type of the Christian soul. And the command given by Boaz to Ruth to glean in his fields, and not to glean in any other field, is very emphatic, and is repeated afterwards by Naomi. 197 Ver. 9. RUTH II Ver. 18. 1. Where are we to Glean ? — We are warned that there is only one field in which we must glean — the field of Jesus Christ ; the field of His Church ; the field purchased by His Death and Passion ; the field watered by the blood of His martyrs ; the field which for nineteen hundred years has produced its glorious harvest of countless saints. David says, ' Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God '. We must first be planted there by the Sacrament of Baptism. But this is not all. We must remain there, and grow there, and flourish there, and glean there, if we are to fulfil the commands of Holy Writ. II. What are we to Glean ? — Even those who are gleaning in Christ's Church need to be reminded that they are to seek those things which are best. What are we gleaning? 1. Are we making the best use of our labour? Are we picking up the largest, and finest, and ripest ears of corn ? The Sacraments of the • Church, these are the full, ripe ears, the great means of grace. Do we avail ourselves of them in all their fullness. 2. Are we picking up those stalks of corn from which the birds have plucked the ears, which are, therefore, only husks and straw? What are our prayers and devotions? Are they merely formal words of the lips, and not feelings of the heart ; the form of devotion without the spirit ? 3. Are we picking up noxious weeds which grow among the com, and making up our sheaves with them ? St. Paul tells us some of the things which we should be gleaning in the fields of Christian virtue, when he says, ' Whatsoever things are true,' etc. III. How are we Gleaning:? — With steady per- severance, with real industry ; or in a fitful, idle, slothful way ? — A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Les- sons for the Christian Year, part iv. p. 344. ' Have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee ? ' — Ruth ii. g. Let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion. The young man is past his tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caitiff spirit ; he is run from discipline, and is let loose to passion ; the man by this time hath wit enough to choose his vice, to act his best, to court his mistress, to talk confidently, and ignorantly, and perpetually, to despise his betters, to deny nothing to his appetites, to do things that, when he is indeed a man, he must for ever be ashamed of ; for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their manhood ; they can discern good from evil ; and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good. — Jeremy Taylor. References.— II. 12. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1851. II. 14. — J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 263. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 522. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 229. ' Reproach her not' — Ruth ii. 15. Innocence and haycocks do not always go together. — Mac aula y. References. — II. 15. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2585. II. 15, 16.— Ibid. vol. viii. No. 464. . Let -Ruth 'And Boaz said, The Lord recompense thy work. . fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her.' 11. 16 with 12. Charity was so well matched with his religion, with- out which good words are but hypocrisy. — Bishop Hall. RUTH, THE MOABITESS ' So they gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had gleaned : and it was about an ephah of barley.' — Ruth ii. 17. I. Notice the good providence of God, illustrated in the story of Ruth and Naomi. We are shown here how true is that verse of the Psalms, ' He is the father of the fatherless, and the God of the widow '. He never faileth those that trust in Him. II. Let us notice in Ruth the reward of daughterly affection and dutifulness. Had she gone back, as her sister Orpah did, when Naomi gave her the choice of returning, even pressed her to go back, she would never have left that memorial of herself which will last while time lasts — the book of Ruth in our Bible. She would never have married Boaz, nor become by so doing the ancestress of the Messiah. III. She is an example of another great quality. How beautiful in God's sight, as in the sight of man, is maidenly modesty, purity, steadiness of conduct She spent, as we know, many days gleaning in the harvest field : never in all those days did she sav 01 do aught that might cause shame. IV. ' Where hast thou gleaned to-day ? ' This question opens out into a far wider meaning when we look at its spiritual instruction. It is a question that coming out of a Christian man's mouth applies to many things beside that of gathering up the ears of corn. Where hast thou gleaned to-day ? may be asked, and ought \q be asked, by each of us of his own soul, in respeOTW his way of spending the Sabbath, and asked at the Close of every Sunday. V. Notice the diligence of Ruth. She gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she gleaned, and it was about an ephah (eight gallons) of bailey, a good day's work, bringing with it a good recompense of reward. Ruth invites us to use all diligence to make our calling and election sure. She by what she did in the plot of ground at Bethlehem shows us what our work should be in the world. To glean, to gather up, here a little, and there a little, of those great Christian qualities which go to make a character that God will accept. — R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Ser- mons (3rd Series), p. 119. ' And she brought forth and gave to her that she had reserved after she was sufficed.' — Ruth ii. 18. Discussing, in Arcady : For Better or Worse (pp. 225 f.), the effect of the workhouse system in rural England, Dr. Jessopp observes : ' It does people good to be brought into daily intercourse with the aged and the weak and the needy. It is bad for us if our sense of pity and our gentle sympathies are never ap- pealed to. We get hard and coarse and selfish, that 198 Ver. 9. RUTH III., IV Ver. 17. way. . . . But for good or evil there stands the fact that in our villages we have very little to do with or for the old people who are a link with the past, and very little occasion to make any sacrifices for others, and still less are we called upon to interest ourselves in their sorrows. The law of the land has come in and taken out of our hands the duty of look- ing after the poor and aged.' References.—- II. 19. — J. McNeill, Regent Square Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 97. T. Champness, New Coins from Old Gold, p. 142. II. 20.— S. Cox, The Book of Ruth, p. 164. III. 1-18. — Ibid. p. 105. H. W. Webb-Peploe, The Life of Privilege, p. 130. THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF RUTH ' Thou art a near kinsman.' — Ruth hi. g. In speaking of the message which this little book has for us, we shall treat it as conveying to us a message of redemption. Looked at in this light the book has, I think, these things to tell us : — I. It tells us that the range of God's grace is ever wider than our conception of it. The book of Ruth shows us how one who was a member of an idolatrous people, one who was a Gentile, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel, a stranger from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world, was actually brought into the number of the chosen people, and became one of the direct line of which the Messiah came. In the old time, as in the new, God's salvation, though reaching men through channels of His own appointing, was open to arWho cared to avail them- selves of it. I 0 II. The second thing about redemption which this book tells us is, that although God's grace is so free and open to all, it can save us only when we make it ours by an act of deliberate choice. God does not force His salvation on ai^^Ruth chose Israel and Israel's God. Had thatfll^ not been made, Ruth would never have gainedher posi- tion as the wife of Boaz. And even after this decisive choice was made her position was not secured until she had claimed all that was hers. Ruth had to make herself and her claims known to Boaz. She had to possess herself of her rights by a holy violence. And this she did. With like decision and like determination must we act if we would win the heavenly city. It is true ' whosoever will may come '. It is true ' him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out'. But if these blessed promises are to avail us, we must will and we must come. III. The third lesson about redemption which this book teaches us is this— that redemption is achieved by and only by a Kinsman-Redeemer. Ruth owed her position in no sense to herself. She owed it entirely to Boaz. Her knowledge of her claim, her presentation of her claim, would have availed her nothing had Boaz refused to act. And Boaz' power of acting depended on his being a kinsman. God's grace is indeed wide, wide as the universe, great as God Himself, but God's grace reaches sinners only through the Redeemer. And our Lord's power to redeem us lies in the fact that He is our near kinsman. Our Saviour is God. But our Saviour is man — as truly God as if He were not man, as truly man as if He were not God. Man alone could be the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. In Jesus therefore we have a Kinsman-Redeemer. And as Boaz, the kinsman-redeemer of this little book, completed his work of redemption by uniting Ruth to himself and making her a sharer in all his glory and power, so is it with our Redeemer. He saves us by union to Himself. — G. H. C. Macgbegor, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 101. ' Thou hast showed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning.' — Ruth hi. io. This text, in its Latin form, ' Priorem misericordiam posteriore superasti,' has been placed on a tablet in the porch of the ancient church of Guingamp in Brittany, to commemorate the blessings received dur- ing a recent mission. Reference.— IV. 1-22.— S. Cox, The Book of Ruth, p. 123. ' I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance. ' — Ruth iv. 6. The revolutionary school always forgets that right apart from duty is a compass with one leg. The action of right inflates an individual, fills him with thoughts of self and of what others owe him, while it ignores the other side of the question, and extin- guishes his capacity for devoting himself to a common cause. — Amiel. The desire to raise the pyramid of my existence — the base of which is already laid — -as high as possible in the air absorbs every other desire, and scarcely ever quits me. — Goethe to Lavatee. Reference. — IV. 8. — B. D. Johns, Pulpit Notes, p. 44. ' And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and be- came nurse unto it' — Ruth iv. i6. It would seem as if there was already a kind of joyous foretaste of the birth and infancy which in after- times was to be for ever associated with the name of Bethlehem. It was the first appearance on the scene of what may by anticipation be called even then the Holy Family, for that child was Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. — Stanley. ' And they called his name Obed ; he is the father of Jesse, the father of David.'— Ruth iv. 17. There is no tradition in the Hebrew literature which is at first sight more purely composed of universal human elements than the story of Ruth. Hartley Coleridge, in verses commenting on the mysterious ' tale of bloodshed ' which constitutes the history of Israel, has called this story an oasis of human beauty in ' the wild and waste of Bible truth '. Yet the cause of its preservation and consecration among the chronicles of the nation is scarcely the loveliness of the rural picture of the young gleaner in the harvest fields of Bethlehem followed by the kindly eye of the 199 Ver. 17. RUTH IV Ver. 17. rich farmer bidding his young men drop ears on pur- pose for her from the sheaves ; nor even the mere devotedness of heart which made Ruth 'cleave' to Naomi. It is, on the one side, the exultation in the providential reward which was allotted to an alien woman of Moab for her abandonment of her country and gods in order to embrace the faith, and identify herself with the fortunes, of Israel ; on the other side, the fact that David, the great King of Israel, was descended so directly from her, which made this beautiful narrative so precious to the Jews. — R. H. Hutton, Literary Essays, pp. 256, 257. 200 THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL The first book of Samuel deals with the process from the judges to the kings. In this book we have the history of the people from the last of the judges, Samuel, through the troublous times of Saul to the beginning of the reign of the king chosen by God, David. The book naturally falls into three sections, around the names of these three men. I. Samuel. — The story of the life at Shiloh reveals two movements going forward simultaneously in Israel, those namely of degeneration and regeneration. The corruption of the priesthood was appalling. Within the precincts of the Tabernacle Samuel was preserved from pollution, and grew in the fear of the Lord. The crisis of judgment foretold by Samuel came in connexion with the Philistine attack upon the people. A dark period of twenty years is passed over without detailed record. During that time Israel was under Philistine rule, and Samuel was advancing from youth to manhood, and approaching the hour of his leadership. In a brief paragraph the story of his actual j udgment is told. II. Saul. — The book now merges into its second division, which has to do with Saul. The people clamoured for a king. The occasion of their request was the maladministration of the sons of Samuel, and their sinful practices. The real principle under- lying it was a desire on their part to be, as they said, 'like all the nations'. In the pursuit of his filial duty Saul was led into contact with Samu^k while they were alone he communicated to him % Bjivine appointment, and his formal presentation to the people took place at Mizpeh. Two chapters give an account of the wars Saul waged. While he was victorious, he was disobedient in that he spared Agag and part of the spoil. The two men are seen in striking contrast at this point. Saul, the man of great opportunity, miserably failing, and passing along the pathway of disobedience to ruin. Samuel, rejected long ago of the people, still mighty in his allegiance to God. III. David. — Samuel was rebuked for his prolonged mourning, and was commissioned to arise and await the new king. Immediately the two men are seen in the presence of a national danger. David without human resource, but conscious of the true greatness of his people, and sure strength of God, gained his victory over Goliath. One of the most charming love-stories of the Bible is that of the friendship between Jonathan and David. Coincident with the commencement thereof, the hatred of Saul against David deepened, and manifested itself in deeply laid schemes and unworthy methods in which he attempted to rid himself of his rival. During this period Samuel died. So terrible was the pressure of these dark days that David himself became pessimistic. The closing chapter of this book tells the story of the end of one of the most disastrous failures. Saul died upon the field of battle by his own hand. — G. Campbell Morgan, The Analysed Bible, p. 141. THE MESSAGE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL The books of Samuel are so named from the circum- stance that Samuel is the prominent figure at the opening of these books and in the history with which they deal. The use of his name has nothing whatever to do with their authorship. The books of Samuel are undoubtedly compilations. While there is much in them to show that in their present form they came to us from one hand, there is also very much to show that the compiler in his work had the assistance of numerous contemporary documents. The composition of the books of Samuel falls in the golden age of Israel's history. In these books we find perhaps the best and purest Hebrew that the Bible contains. In this chapter we deal with the first book. From this book in its three sections there came to us three lessons which are the main messages of the book. I. From the first section comes the word, ' God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth '. The teaching of this section is a strong protest against ritualism. The idea that the presence and the blessing of God can be secured by the use of sacred vestments, and sacred postures, and sacred acts performed by or on sacred persons in specially sacred places, is an idea not a whit less superstitious than the idea that victory would be secured by sending the ark into the battle-field. II. From the second section of the book comes the word, ' Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all '. This is a lesson that comes to us from the history of Saul. God, for the fulfilment of His purpose with Israel, wanted a king who should be really Jehovah's servant. But Saul, in his treatment of Amalek, showed that he set himself above God. In this matter, which some would call little, Saul manifested a spirit which made him utterly unfit to be God's king. He offended in one point, but was guilty of all. And the sequel showed that the man who was capable of setting aside the command of God in this one point, was also cap- able of ranging himself in definite opposition to the purpose of God to set David on the throne. III. From the third section of this book comes the 201 1 SAMUEL II Ver. 12. word, ' The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, and the thoughts of His heart to all generations '. In reading this history we cannot lose sight of the fact that it is typical of David's Son and David's Lord. It is the counsel of the Lord that Jesus Christ shall yet reign as King over the whole earth. God has sworn by Himself that in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ every knee shall bow. At present this often seems but little likely ! Yet, we cannot lose heart. We read the story of David. We see him a fugitive, an outlaw, an outcast, with a mere handful of men to uphold his cause ; we read on and find him after a little seated on the throne, and those who had shared his suffering sharing in his glory. ' The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, and the thoughts of His heart to all generations '. — G. H. C. Macgeegoe, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 115. SAMUEL THE SEER Ik Samuel we have a deep stretch of condescension — God in communion with the life of a child. I. Was he a miracle — this little Samuel ? No — in the view characteristic of the Bible he is the real and normal aspect of humanity. All seers of God's king- doms have seen it by the light of their childhood. We do not drop our childhood when we become men, we carry it with us into the life of men. Every sage bears within his bosom a little Samuel — an instinctive child — life which concludes without reasoning, adores without arguments, worships without symbols, prays without words. The man who listens to this voice is a prophet of the kingdom. II. There are two things about Samuel's illumina- tion which are very prominent, and which seem to be typical of religious illumination in general. (a) The call of Samuel does not come to him as a call from heaven, but as a voice from earth. The voice of God has assumed the accents of a man. Our deepest impressions of spiritual things come to us in- directly. It is not by a voice from heaven that a man believes himself to be in the presence of God ; it is by the blending of earthly voices. (b) From the moment in which he recognized the real origin of the message, he perceived it to be some- thing which would disturb the calm of his life. It brought not peace, but a sword. Although the case of Samuel is an accentuated one, the call of duty is nearly always a struggle. The very idea of duty im- plies restraint. III. There were three great functions in the Jewish nation whose simultaneous existence was contempor- ary with the life of Samuel — the Prophet, the Priest, and the King. (a) The Priest is the representative of the past. He exists as a salve to the pains of memory. (b) The King represents the present. He exists to guide the hand at the actual hour. (c) The Prophet is the representative of the future. He exists to tell not merely of forthcoming events, but of eternal principles. And therefore it is that the organ of the prophetic life is ever the spirit of the child. Childhood is the time that looks forward. — G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, I p. 239. References. — I. 15. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi. No. i 1515. I. 20, 21. — Williams, Characters of the Old Testament, \ p. 160. I. 22. — J. Keble, Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service, p. 292. II. 1. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 37. II. 2.— F. Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 115. II. 3. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1736. THE UNRECOGNIZED VOICES OF GOD ' Samuel did not yet know the Lord.' — i Samuel ii. 7. We turn to the revelation in Christ for comfort, only to realize how long the silence has been since God spoke to men in Him. What we long for is to hear God for ourselves, to hear Him speak to-day. I. God speaks to men to-day. Unless God speaks now we cannot really believe that He ever spoke to men. It is absurd to imagine that a revelation was made to men through long centuries and closed in the year, say, a.d. 70, and no voice from the great Unseen has come since. He does speak, and it is by the Bible that we test the voice and know the voice of God from other voices. II. God speaks to men now, but we often do not recognize His voice. In so saying I do not deny that God speaks to men through audible means, and comes to men in dreams and visions, impressions and ap- pearances. But God does not speak to all of us in visions and voices and impressions. III. How, then, may we recognize the voice of God when He speaks to-day ? (a) God speaks to men in the highest conscience of the time, (b) God speaks to men when men's thoughts are stirred to higher conceptions of truth, (c) God speaks to men through our fellow-men. IV. Let us each listen for God's voice in our in- divid^^fcives. For if God spc;iks to nations and gvnerWmi*, lie will speak to individuals. How shall I know, then, that God speaks to me ? We speak to Him in prayer, but there comes no audible answer, and we often wonder whether, after all, God hears. How shall we know ? When prayer makes us better men He has spoken. Whenever our conscience is touched, whenever our souls are stirred, whenever there comes the inspiration to a new, better life, that good and perfect gift has come down from above, and if we reject it we have rejected God Himself. — E. Aldom Feench, God's Message to Modern Doubt, p. 75. Reference. — II. 9. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 176. SONS OF ELI, YET SONS OF BELIAL ' The sons of Eli were sons of Belial.'— 1 Samuel 11. 12. We are always coming upon these conflicts, ironies, impossible lies. There is no smooth reading in history. 1. But we see this not only religiously in the dis- tinctive sense of that term. We see this inversion and perversion of heredity along all the lines of life, and in all the spheres of human experience. 202 Ver. 26. 1 SAMUEL II Ver. 26. (a) A civilized man, a son of civilization, mav be one of the most barbarous men upon the face of the earth. Civilization has in its power, by the very necessity of its being civilization, to go deeper than ever poor ignorant barbarism could do. (6) Who can be so ignorant as a soul who has given himself up to the service of evil ? It is not ignorance of the base and vulgar type that can be excused on the ground of want of privilege and want of opportunity, but it is that peculiar ignorance which, having the light hides it, knowing the right does the wrong. (c) Sometimes we may say, ' the sons of refinement are the sons of vulgarity '. Is there any refinement so vulgar as the refinement which gives itself up to work all manner of evil criticism with greediness and with diabolical delight in the torture and humiliation of others ? II. We hold nothing by right of ancestry. You cannot hand down a good character to others. Whatever we have we can only have by right of labour, thought, watchfulness, and conducting the whole economy of life in the spirit of stewardship. Do not, therefore, on the one hand, presume upon your parentage and say, ' My father was good, and therefore I cannot be bad ' ; and, do not on the other hand, be discouraged and say, ' I come from so low a beginning that it is impossible for me to do any- thing'. There is nothing impossible to courage, to faith, to reverence, to prayer. — J. Parker, British Weekly Pulpit, 1890, p. 88. References. — II. 18. — C. Bosanquet, Tender Grass for the Lambs, p. 128. W. S. Pearse, Sermons for Children, p. 56. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons (1st Series), p. 299. II. 18, 19.— W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches, p. 174. II. 22.— J. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii. p. 150. II. 2.5. — T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 218. THE CHILD SAMUEL ' And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord, and also with men.' — i Samuel ii. 26. These words will arouse our attention not merely on account of what they tell us about the character of Samuel, but also because they are the same words which are used to describe the character of our Lord. Samuel was, in his young days, apparently, the same sort of child as was our Lord. Each was in favour with the Lord. I. Naturalness in Children. — He was a child just of the kind that God would have him be. How often children, through their surroundings, are very much warped from their childhood. The little affectations, curious phrases, little methods of raillery or contempt — these certainly do not belong to the child, but have plainly been picked up elsewhere. I am sure that there is one thing God likes to see in a child, that it should be in every sense, on its religious and all other sides, perfectly natural. II. Trustfulness in Children. — Children being so quick in a simple way, if they are wisely tended and directed to recognize the Unseen, we notice next, how wonderfully they trust unless their sense of faith has been trifled with. Have we not at times, per- haps, when we have told children some little anec- dote, been astonished at the way in which they accepted it as true? Samuel was a child of this kind. He had that quick, ready recognition that there was something beyond the world we see which is implanted in every child. He was ready to trust his God, he was ready to try and obey. How did this come about ? The times were very broken and very strange ones. The book of Samuel follows hard upon the book of Judges, and, as you know, the times of the Judges might be summed up in that phrase, 'There was no King in Israel, no distinct ruler,' and in such a time there are continually cast up two types of character, and these are strongly marked. It was so in the Middle Ages. There were comparatively few people of the intermediate kind ; people were either very good according to their opportunities, or they were very bad. Now we see something like this in the time of Samuel. On the one hand at Shiloh there were the two sons of Eli, breaking the law of God in various ways, and in some of them the very worst ways, and then there, too, we have the sight of this family of Elkanah. He was a religious man, and he was accustomed to go up and worship God. We are told specially that he went up, and his household went up every year. We see that he was an earnest-hearted, religious man, a lover of God, and loving very much his own household too. And still more remarkable is his wife, Hannah. She is in every sense a saint of the Most High. See how she comes and pleads for the child, see how, when the child is given her, she vows it to the Lord, and how year after year she comes up to look after its well-being, having placed it where she thought it was most fitted for its spiritual good, in the courts of the Tabernacle with Eli. Are your children the children of many prayers? Do you bring their names constantly before God ? III. Children's Work for Qod. — Samuel was con- nected with useful religious work. We are told that he ministered to the Lord before Eli ; we are told that on an eventful occasion, and no doubt it was like other occasions, he opened the doors of the temple of the Lord. As a boy he would not do anything very extraordinary, but there were little, simple things which a child could do, and these his mother through Eli put him in the way of doing. Do we take suffi- cient care to teach our children that they can in their way bless men and work for God ? IV. The Opportunities of Children.— If we parents were quicker to recognize that we need not wait for children to come to old age, or middle age, or even maturity, but that much before that they really have a true place in God's kingdom, and a true service to do for God, how much happier parents would be ! How exhilarating it would be to say, 'I have the child, and I can even now make it a servant of God ! ' The teaching of Scripture surely is this, that God makes different calls upon different persons, and that 203 Ver. 30. 1 SAMUEL II., Ill Ver. 1. the little child, the young man or the young woman, the middle-aged and the old person, each has a special degree of holiness, each has a special way of serving God, and if only they serve God in that way He will bless them perpetually, and ever more and more. References. —II. 26. — J. Edmunds, Sermons in a Village Church, p. 178. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 130. GOD'S PROMISES CONDITIONAL ' Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before Me for ever : but now the Lord saith, Be it far from Me ; for them that honour Me I will honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.' — i Samuel ii. 30. God's promises are conditional. This is a point which is often overlooked. We are somewhat apt to look upon God's promises as absolute, and to insist strongly on our security, forgetting that they imply reciprocity on our part. We shall find, if we search the Scrip- tures, that in all cases God's promises are in the nature of covenants or agreements. There are two parties to them — God and man, and when God's promises have failed it is because the conditions on which they were made had not been fulfilled by man, although these conditions, perhaps, were not expressed but understood. We may briefly examine one or two cases where the promise seems to be absolute, but we shall still find that it is conditional. I. The Case of Eli. — God had said, 'And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be My priest, to offer upon Mine altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before Me? ... I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before Me for ever.' And we hear that Eli sinned by his indulgence to his sons. He indulged them, and they indulged in grievous sins, so that they brought the priestly order into ill-repute, and caused the people to sin and were a stumbling-block. And so we see the result in the words of our text, ' but now the Lord saith, Be it far from Me '. This change was because the sons of Eli made themselves vile, and Eli restrained them not. Accordingly the priesthood, which had been promised to the house of Eli, passed to the house of another. Here we have an instance of the promise of God, seemingly without condition, nevertheless depending on a condition. Eli broke the law, and therefore the promise remained unfulfilled. II. The Case of Moses. — Moses was called to lead the people out of Egypt, and the word of God came that God had come down to deliver the people out of the hands of the Egyptians. From this the promise went on to say that He would lead them into a land flowing with milk and honey. From these words we seem to gather that there was no condition attached to the promise. But what was the sequel ? Neither Moses nor the people from Egypt entered into the land, and this because they did not fulfil the condi- tions which, though unexpressed, were understood. Moses spoke unadvisedly with his lips, and God withdrew the promise He gave unto him. In the same way the people sinned. They came to the borders of the land, but when reports came back of mighty cities and men like giants, then they were terrified, and they had no trust in God that He could perform the promise He had made. They murmured against God, and God withdrew from them the pro- mise. And all who left Egypt, except two men, left their bones to whiten in the wilderness, because they did not fulfil the conditions of the promise which, though not expressed, were understood. III. The Case of the Shipwrecked Crew. — We may take one other instance from the New Testament. You will remember that St. Paul journeyed from Judaea to the Imperial Court at Rome. When the vessel was off the island of Clauda a tempest arose, and it looked as if the vessel would be overwhelmed by the waters. They lightened the ship by casting away the tackling, but they had little hope of saving their lives. In the middle of the night a message came from God to Paul, saying that he was to take heart — he should not lose his life, and that God had given him the lives of all those with him in the vessel. The sailors seemed to have lost heart, and paid little attention to what Paul said to them. They de- vised a scheme to leave the vessel, and listened to St. Paul a little to deceive him. But he knew of their intention, and told the centurion, ' Unless these abide in the ship ye cannot be saved '. And so the soldiers cut the ropes, and prevented the work of embarking. They remained in the ship to work her, and all came safely to land at last. Thus, although the promise that the sailors' lives should be saved had apparently been made without condition, yet when they were about to leave the vessel St. Paul said, ' Except these abide in the ship ye cannot be saved '. Evidently he thought there was a condition, although none had been stated. It really amounted to this : ' I will save you fra^fcthe deep if you will do what you can to save y^^elves. If you will make the effort, I will bless it and make it successful.' IV. God Helps Those who Help Themselves. — It is universally true that God helps those who help themselves. Man has his part to play. The Chris- tian man who is not in earnest will often find himself discouraged. He will find himself falling far short of his ideals. But if that man is- really in earnest, if he makes his efforts the subject of prayer and works together with God, then he will advance in his spiritual life. God's arms are always open to receive him ; God never sends men away. References. — II. 30. — M. Briggs, Practical Sermons on Old Testament Subjects, p. 143. W. Brock, Midsummer Morning Sermons, p. 37. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. iii. p. 357. III. — 9- Sadler, Sermons for Children, p. 19. Sunday Thoughts, p. 1. A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 64. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 163. THE WORD OF THE LORD ' The word of the Lord was precious in those days.' — 1 Samuel hi. 1. Is there not a message for us from this story of Samuel listening to the word of God ? Is the word of God, 204 Ver. 1. 1 SAMUEL III Ver. 10. the revelation which He gives to men, precious in these days ? There is, as there was in those days, no open vision, but we have the written word of God. It carries our minds on — does it not ? — not only to the revelation which God gave of the word of the Lord in the Old Testament, but to that greater Word of the Lord Who was with the Father from all eternity, God the Son, the second person in the Blessed Trinity, the Word of God Who was God. That revelation is given to you and to me, it is spoken to us in these later days — the revelation of Jesus Christ. God speaks to us in various ways — by the circumstances of our lives, through our consciences, through Holy Scripture ; and we know not God, we do not recognize His voice, and so we do not hear the message which He has for each soul. Let us consider how that message comes to each one. I. God's Voice in the Circumstances of Our Lives. — First of all in the circumstances of our lives, as it was in the circumstances of the life of Samuel. We were placed in the same position near to God when we were brought to Him in our baptism. The circum- stances of our lives are very much those of Samuel, hedged around, guarded from evil, from temptation, being taught from earliest infancy the will of God, even as he was. We can see all through our lives that God is continually near us, speaking to us, calling to us in the circumstances of those lives. What does He require us to do ? If He sends us temptation, He calls us to face that temptation. If He saves us from temp- tation, He calls us to higher things still that we may advance in holiness. Each one of us can look into our lives and see how God speaks to us in the circumstances of those lives. Ii. God's Voice in Conscience. — Then further, God speaks in our conscience — if we do not pay attention to that voice as it speaks to us, if we do not listen for it, then that voice will grow dimmer and dinkier. If we do not act on what that voice tells us, \^^.-i.ll not hear any voice at all in the end. A hardened sinner or a confirmed criminal will commit a sin which you and I would call a deadly and awful sin. Why ? His conscience is dead, he cannot hear through it the voice of the Holy Spirit. Let us take care that as the word of the Lord comes to us through the voice of conscience, that we listen to that voice and act upon it. III. God's Voice in the Bible. — Then there is — taking the more literal meaning of the word of the Lord — God's voice speaking to us through the Bible. As we listen to the lessons in church, as we read our chapter day by day, does it bring to us a message from God ? Or do we hear or read the words just as a story, interesting, nothing more. As we listen for the voice of God, either through the circumstances of our life, or our conscience, or the Bible, let us be ready with Samuel to say, ' Speak, Lord ; for Thy servant heareth '. Speak, Lord, into our inner- most being, not only to our outward ears but to our very soul. Speak, Lord, that we may hear, and do Thy will, that we may go on assured that what we do is done under Thy guidance, that we are trying to carry out Thy will, and are in the end bound to come to that everlasting home which Thou, even now, art preparing for us in the heaven above. THE DIVINE CALL i Samuel hi. i-io. Nothing is more certain in matter of fact, than that some men do feel themselves called to high duties and works to which others are not called. Why this is we do not know ; whether it be that those who are not called forfeit the call from having failed in former trials, or have been called and have not followed ; or that though God gives baptismal grace to all, yet He really does call some men by His free grace to higher things than others ; but so it is ; this man sees sights which that man does not see, has a larger faith, a more ardent love, and a more spiritual understanding. . . . The more men aim at high things, the more sensitive perception they have of their own shortcomings ; and this again is adapted to humble them specially. We need not fear spiritual pride, then, on following Christ's call, if we follow it as men in earnest. Earnestness has no time to com- pare itself with the state of other men ; earnestness has too vivid a feeling of its own infirmities to be elated at itself. — J. H. Newman. ' And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak ; for Thy servant heareth.' — i Samuel hi. io. One of the most delightful and fascinating person- alities of the Old Testament is the child Samuel. The charm, among other things, consists in this : we find in him what we long to see in all our boys and what is beautiful when we do see it. What is that ? Why, this : there is nothing so gracious or so grace- ful in all creation as real religion in a young boy's heart. The fresh, simple, unaffected goodness of a pure-minded boy who fears God and loves his mother is charming and delightful. I. The Personality and Circumstances of Samuel. — He had many advantages which are not given to every boy. (a) He was blessed in his start in life. — He was blessed with good parents, the greatest blessing that a boy or a girl can possibly have. Unfortunately you cannot arrange this before you come into the world, but God arranges it for you, so the greater is the gift if when you come you find that you are the child of godly people. (b) He was associated with religious people and religious work. — That is the greatest possible point. Get your boys interested in the attractiveness of religious worship and work as soon as you possibly can. Throw them as soon as it is possible into a happy, busy, religious atmosphere. You know how to do that most effectively. Throw yourselves into it and they will follow, for your boys are like sheep without their stupidity. They have a great capacity for following where you lead. Throw yourselves into it, be keenly and deeply and increasingly interested in the work of God and in the work of the parish 205 Ver. 10. 1 SAMUEL III Ver. 15. church to which you belong. Samuel's people were, and the consequence was that the little fellow when he grew up was as much at home in the Church of God as in his own sitting-room with his parents. II. But He Knew Not the Lord. — He worshipped, he prayed, he heard the Word of God such as there was in those days, he loved the service of the Taber- nacle, he mixed with the people of God, but as yet anything like conscious spiritual communion with the living God was a thing altogether unknown to him. There may be great religious privilege and much religious instruction, but no real personal saving knowledge of Christ. There may be in a boy or a girl, or a man or a woman, a sweet and pure and holy goodness, but he may not yet consciously know the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not be disheartened if you feel that is your case, that you are loving the service of God and enjoying it and looking forward to it and delighting in God's work, and yet somehow you are conscious that you have not spiritual fellow- ship with the Lord Jesus Christ. I say, do not be disheartened. Samuel did not yet know the Lord, but the Lord knew him. That was better ; and He knows you. And as in Samuel's case, so in yours, there will one day be an awakening to what was there all the time, but you did not know it. Your eyes will be opened perhaps in a moment, perhaps only by degrees, to a conscious spiritual fellowship with the living God. III. The Divine Call.— When the Lord called him he did not recognize His voice. How like he was to ourselves who are older and better taught I We do not always recognize God's voice when we hear it. He speaks, but there is none to answer. Some go farther than this, and will not recognize it. We refuse to, we do not want to. God calls us by His Word, as perhaps He is calling some now ; God calls us by His providence, and we say, ' How strange that it should happen so, what a remarkable occur- rence, what a remarkable coincidence ! ' It was not an occurrence or a coincidence, it was God breaking the silence of your life. So often there is One standing among us Whom we know not. Samuel did not recognize God's voice when he did hear it. It was so human. God talks so humanly, so intelligently, so sympathetically, just as we can bear it, almost in our own language, so that we think it is our own. Sometimes something occurs in our life which foix:es us to stop and take steps either for or against Christ. At first we thought it was a mere nothing, till it dawned upon us it is the Lord wanting to speak to our heart. Or God has thrown you into the company of somebody who has been a blessing to your life and completely altered it. It was the Lord. Or you have been in the habit of reading your daily portion of Holy Scripture, often only just running over the syllables and shutting the Book, till one day somehow all these syllables burst into beauty and life. It was there before, but you did not see it. All became clear, and we said, ' How strange, I never read it before '. It was not strange, it was the Lord speaking to us in His Word. Keep yours ears open from this time forth. Be listeners, be receivers, be where the Voice is likely to be sound- ing, be where the blessing is. I do not know what you will hear if you wait long enough. Samuel's entire course was probably determined by his im- mediate response to God's first call. Yours and mine may be. Neglect that call when it comes, and the Voice may never speak again. Respond to it, and the music of God will follow you to the end. 'Speak ; for Thy servant heareth.' — i Samuel hi. io. This passage is quoted by Pere Gratry in his Life of Henri Perreyve, who consecrated himself at the age of twelve to the service of Christ. Pere Gratry points out that many teachers are disposed to turn children aside from early consecration, saying, as Eli said to Samuel : ' It is nothing, child ; sleep on ! ' (' Enfant, ce n'est rien ; dormez toujours ! '), or as our version gives the woi-ds : ' I called not ; lie down again '. THE CALL OF SAMUEL I Samuel hi. io. Is it not a great thought that God knows the name of eveiy child ? I have read that the shepherds of Helvellyn know the face of every sheep, and can re- cognize the lambs by their likeness to their mothers. ' Every shepherd kens his ain.' This is the confidence of every endeavourer. God knows his name, and has therefore some particular work for him to do. Whom God calls, God appoints to service. In the spring, with the earliest green of the fields and the coming of the first flowers, larks fill the air with song, as though the freshness of life beneath must be accompanied by the freshness of praise above. And so should the dreams and joys and playtime of childhood, have its song of piety, its morning hymns of pi-uii^A Jesus Christ. The mind's early flowering is all t^Psurer for the heart's early praying and obedience. VISION AND DUTY ' And Samuel opened the doors of the house of the Lord.' — i Samuel hi. 15. I. Oue duties are in strange contrast to our missions. Yesterday Samuel was a child, and lived in a childish world. But his little world had grown during the night. It had widened out to embrace the eternal God. And in that vaster universe and under that exaltation of the soul that every widening of outlook brings, it was almost incongruous to be opening doors. So marked indeed is this contrast between task and vision that the sweet illusions which we never realize seem almost to be a ministry of God. When Abraham went out, not knowing whither he went, turning his back upon his father's country, what made him strong ? It was the vision of Canaan that his God had promised him. When I see him fighting the kings there, and herding his flocks and haggling for a tomb, I feel what a gulf there was between his vision and the actual duties laid to his hand to do. Yet 206 Ver. 21. 1 SAMUEL III., IV., VI Ver. 13. the little he did he never could have done but for the light that cheered him on. II. Our visions must never keep us from our duties. I always honour Samuel as I read this verse. I find here something of that faithfulness, and something of that self-restraint that were to make Samuel a king of men. In the morning after the greatest moment in his life Samuel is at his post. Vision or no vision, voice or no voice, his duty must be done, and he will do it. III. Vision and duty are true Christianity. The man who has only vision is a visionary. He builds his castle in the air, he dreams and dies. But the poor world goes staggering on in darkness, and the mere vision is powerless to save. The man who has only duties is a moralist. And if nineteen centuries have demonstrated anything it is the powerlessness of mere morality to save. But in between these two, embracing both, there stands the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. — G. H. Morrison, Flood Tide, p. 53. THE LEAGUE OF CHRISTIANS ' The Lord revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord. And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.' — i Samuel hi. 21 and iv. 1. The call of Samuel is inseparably connected with what Mrs. Browning called our ' childhood's faith '. I. It is not too much to say that the book presents to us two distinct Samuels according to the authorities which the inspired writer happened to be following. One Samuel is the quiet, unobtrusive wiseacre of a small town, where he conducts the worship of Jehovah at a local shrine and dispenses advice all round the district, but is no leader of the nation, no statesman, no prophet of the Lord to an entire people ; the other Samuel is at once ruler and judge and prophet so obviously moved by the Word of the Lord that he puts down one and sets up another, so splu^fcd in his governance of Israel that they feared lu^Ph* they feared Moses all the days of his long life and were saved in that they feared. II. But the Lord did not reveal Himself to Samuel in Shiloh, and the word of Samuel did not come to all Israel, merely because his ministry was honest, in- corruptible, self-denying ; and the apostolic devotion of the modern episcopate will not by itself avail to command the doctrine of Christ our Saviour in all things, even when it is splendidly backed by the labours of the ' inferior clergy, the priest and deacons,' and responded to by a willing and obedient laity. For the call of Samuel was a summons to Eli to realize that a family connexion with the priesthood, and a more or less direct ecclesiastical descent are no magical preservatives against a terrible ' example of life ' and an appalling ' instruction of manners '. The correlative of the call of Samuel and of the rejection of the House of Eli is the discovery that in other lines of descent and in other systems of ministry there is scope for the worship of God and for the pastorate of sinful souls, and it was Eli himself who perceived that the Lord had called the child. III. It is impossible for us who name the Name of Christ to quench our desire that all who do so in our land may be joined together in unity of spirit and in the bond of peace as well as in righteousness of life. That is only another way of saying that we long for the day when the word of the Samuels of our Church may really come to all Israel, not merely to a few men and women in every hundred. True, we should think lightly of a Church and more lightly of leaders that were ready to purchase unity at the price of truth or at the peril of faith. But truth is not com- promised and faith is not wrecked, and purity is not smirched if at this time our fathers in God make a courageous effort to see the historic episcopate in its historical aspect as a slow development into the system which God has put it into the heart of man to conceive for shepherding the sheep that are scattered abroad, not a ready-made ring fence en- closing the sheep and dividing the goats. — E. H. Pearce, Church Family Newspaper, September 25, 1908, p. 816. References. — III. 21. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 186. IV. 3-5. — J. M. Neale, Sermons on the Blessed Sacrament, p. 76. IV. 7. — H. L. Paget, Sermons for the People, vol. i. p. 160. V. 2-4. — -Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1342. THE ARK IN THE HARVEST-FIELD ' And they of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley : and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it.' — 1 Samuel vi. 13. The ark had been a prisoner in the land of the Philis- tines since the fatal day when the army of Israel was completely overthrown. Its presence had brought mischief and misery, plague and death to the cities of Ashdod and Ekron, and after seven months' sojourn it was sent back to its own country with all respect and with all care. I. The coming of the ark at that time to that par- ticular occupation of the men of Beth-shemesh was to them a great reminder, a striking memorial. God brought Himself to the level of their intelligence by sending the ark into their harvest-field as a sacrament of sacred realities, to press home this truth to them that it was to God they owed the harvest they were reaping. II. It is just as much our duty to recognize the same source of all our good, but possibly we need this reminder, God in the harvest-field, more forcibly even than they did. The world has grown much older since then ; childlike faith is not so evident and worthy, simple trust is obscured or pushed out of the way by habits of doubting, of accepting things as of use and wont, and of explaining away the supernatural by natural reasons and processes. Bomance, imagination, wonder are gone ; and with these often goes the sense of blest dependence on the great Creator, and of gratitude to the great Giver of all food. But this decay of interest is, in its way, a sign of the super- ficiality of much of the age in which we live. III. What we need above all to see is the ark of God standing in the harvest-field, the great source of 207 Ver. 14. 1 SAMUEL VII., IX all our supply. We need to rub our sleepy eyes and yet awake to the presence of the great Creator. The ark in the harvest-field teaches us also that the harvest- field is sacred ground ; the field is holy. The ark in the harvest-field was a summons to the men of Beth- shemesh to present the firstfruits of their harvest to God. And as the harvesters saw it safely placed in their midst, it renewed to them the message of the Law, that to God were due the firstfruits of their reaping and in special measure for such special re- storation of the Divine presence and smile. — W. A. Swanson, Homiletic Review, November, 1906, vol. Ltt p. 388. References. — VII. 11. — C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 272. VII. 12. — F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading (2nd Series), p. 105. RECONQUESTS ' The cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel.'— i Samuel vii. 14. We have to dwell upon reconquests, upon the taking back of cities which we ought never to have lost. I do not speak of cities in the ordinary sense of the term, but I speak of the great losses which the Church — meaning by the term Church all its sections and com- munions— has forfeited or lost or unworthily aban- doned. There will be a great day of restoration ; the Church of Christ has much property to reclaim. The Church is very guilty in all this matter ; the Church has let one thing slip after another. The consequence is that the Church is surrounded by a number of little military houses from the windows of which popguns are being continually fired, largely in mockery, and mainly because nearly all the Church property has been stolen. I. We shall reclaim all that has been pilfered. Agnosticism will have to give up its purse and its pass- book and its cheque-book and its balance. Agnos- ticism is the meanest of the thieves. Its name was invented only yesterday ; it was baptized in a ditch, it has done no good for the world, but it has troubled a good many people in the Church on the subject of the unknowableness or unthinkableness of God. The Church ought never to have been troubled or disturbed for one moment. II. And then the Philistines have built another hut which is called Secularism. Man likes a word which he thinks is practical and intelligible. Man loves to keep up a shop with a counter in it ; man would not be happy if he had not a till, that is a box or drawer, un- seen by the public, admission into which, so far as the public are concerned, is by a very small slit in the counter. Man calls that business. He does not care for religion, he cares for the secular aspects of life ; he can understand these, but he cannot understand meta- physics, philosophies, theologies ; so he puts another penny in the slot and sees that nobody else takes it out. This he thinks is commerce. No Christian treats wealth without regard, no truly pious man despises business ; the man who prays best will work best in the city or in the field or on the sea. Prayer is genius in all directions. He who prays best conquers most. We ought never, therefore, to have allowed the secul- arist to take anything from the Church. Anything that the secularist holds which is really precious and good belongs to the Church, and we should have it back, and take all the cities again in honest restoration which for the moment have been wrenched from the grasp of our unbelief. III. There is now a wonderful partition, mainly of lath and plaster, put up between religion and what is called science. There ought to be no such partition. Science is theological ; there is nothing excluded from the grasp and the dominion of a true theological genius and conception of things. The laboratory is a chamber in the Church ; every retort ought to be claimed by the Church as a special instrument or resource or piece of furniture ; the Loid has made the inventory, and that retort belongs to God. We must retake from Philistinian hands terms and properties and provinces which have been stolen from us, either while we were faithlessly slumbering, or in some hour in which our belief gave way and let the devil come in like a flood. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. 11. p. 50. Reference. — VIII. 4-7. — F. D. Maurice, Prophets and Kings, p. 1. THE CHOICE YOUNQ MAN ' A choice young man.' — 1 Samuel ix. This was Saul the son of Kish. This description was given of the Benjamite early in life, and as a young man he was — in some respects at least — most ex- emplary. It is a mistake to think of Saul as through- out an objectionable and wicked character. His later life was most unsatisfactory ; but as we have him here, the son of Kish is not without many admirable traits. I. The first thing to notice about young Saul is his fine physique. As he is introduced to us, the son of Kish is tall in stature, graceful in build, fresh and healthv^^appearance, good-looking and handsome, and wil^P of a lordly mien and carriage. Do not despise a fine physique. The outward should be the expression of the inward ; the physical part of us should be the symbol of the spiritual part of us. Physical beauty alone is a poor thing. But if there be a beauti- ful soul, there cannot be a repulsive or unpleasant face. Intelligence and goodness will impart beauty to a form otherwise without attractions. II. The second thing to notice about him is his filial piety. The asses of his father had wandered from their pasture. He told his son to take a servant and go in search of the animals. And Saul did so, with alacrity, diligence, and cheerfulness. For days he wandered over hills and through valleys in pursuit of his task. He did as he was told, offering no objections and asking no questions. There is no duty more plainly or strongly enforced in the Scriptures than the duty of obeying parents ; and with it are associated the highest rewards and the severest punishments ; and these rewards and punishments pertain not only to the future but to the present life. Gratitude for all that parents have been to us should be a suffi- ciently strong motive to filial devotion. But here it .'208 Ver. 9. 1 SAMUEL I,X Ver. 27. has pleased God to give a further incentive — even His reward and blessing. III. The third thing to notice about him is his modest disposition. On Samuel calling him to the kingdom you remember his answer — ' Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel ? And my family the least of all the families of Benjamin ? Wherefore then speakest thou to me after this manner? ' While pride makes men ridiculous, humil- ity commands admiration and love. But modesty may degenerate into a vice — a vice not particularly common, however, among young men. I would rather have a man over-estimate than under-estimate his powers. While the first mistake may stimulate small talents to the performance of great deeds, the last may prevent great talents from achieving half their possibilities. IV. The fourth thing to notice about him is his independent and generous spirit. In search of the asses he came near to the town where resided the pro- phet Samuel. The servant suggested to him that he should consult the seer about the strayed herd. ' But,' said Saul, ' behold, if we go, what shall we bring the man ? for the bread is spent in our vessels, and there is not a present to bring to the man of God : what have we ? ' And the servant answered Saul again, and said, 'Behold, I have in my hand the fourth part of a shekel of silver : that will I give to the man of God, to tell us our way '. Saul was a gentleman. Do not say that this was an Eastern custom. It was, and the plate at the church door is a Western custom. It is the height of meanness to receive all the advantages of churches and to bear no share, or no adequate share in their support. — A. F. Forrest, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. n. p. 429. 1 a Seer.' SEER AND PROPHET ' He that is now called a Prophet was beforetime ^^fcl I — i Samuel ix. g. ^M So long as they both meant the same thing, what does it matter what they were called ? If they did not always mean the same thing, then it signifies a great deal. We must not have old names with new mean- ings, nor must we invent new ideas to suit old terms. The parable of the old wine and the new bottles, the old bottles and the new wine, old ideas and new con- ceptions, afford a very tempting ground for fancy and invention and divers knavery. When we have a word, let us know exactly what its meaning is. When we change the word, publish the fact ; do not let us have any vocal or verbal legerdemain; let us beware of trifling with terms, let us beware of meddling with the currency of the King's language. ' He that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.' Probably there was really no change of a vital kind, and therefore the change of terms re- solved itself into the popular question, What's in a name ? But there is a principle here ; there is a great moral possibility just at this very point ; let us have no verbal ambiguity or ambiguity in deed, and then tell others that we really meant in substance the same thing, when we Jdid not. There is a morality of language, there is a currency of words ; and we must not keep some little private mint in which we counter- feit the inscribed and superscribed glory of the heavenly realm. Let us apply this change of names to the circumstances in which we find ourselves in our own day. I. That which is now called a Discovery was before- time called a Revelation. I prefer the beforetime word ; it is deeper, it holds more, it is intellectually and spiritually more capacious ; it is ideally and imaginatively more poetical and ideal. II. He that is now called an Agnostic was before- time called a Blind Man. I prefer the beforetime description ; it seems to get nearer the truth. It would be impossible, I think, to find a proud blind man. Did you ever in all your companionship and confidences find a proud blind fellow-creature? It would be difficult for a blind man to be proud, but it is the natural air of my lord the agnostic. You never found a humble agnostic ; he could not be humble ; he has eloquence enough to pretend to be humble, but in the soul of him, if he has a soul, he is as proud as Lucifer. III. That which is now called an Accident was beforetime called Providence. I like the old term best ; it covers more ground, it is nobler, it stands in a more royal majesty. I will not have any accidents in my little world ; I have no room for accidents, — little broken pieces of china that nobody can patch together again. I have in my little world of imagin- ing and experience a ruling, loving, watchful Provi- dence. IV. That which is now called a Better State of Things was beforetime called Regeneration. And I like it better. Oh for the old, old Regeneration ! — the metaphysical, penetrating, all-including new birth. There are many dusters and sweepers in the world, persons who go about with little dusters, and rubbing things and saying, Now they are all right. It is one thing to have a Hyde- Park-Sunday-afternoon-demon- stration duster and another thing to have a Holy Ghost. V. That which is now called the Continuity of Law was beforetime called the Sovereignty of God. VI. That which is now called the Survival of the Fittest was beforetime called Predestination, election, foreordination : and these are the grand terms when properly defined and understood. — Joseph Parker, City temple Pulpit, vol. n. p. 202. STAND STILL AWHILE ' And as they were going down to the end of the city, Samuel said to Saul, Bid the servant pass on before (and he passed on) but stand thou still awhile that I may show thee the Word of God.' — i Samuel ix. 27. Samuel had been entertaining Saul at a sumptuous meal, and would speak to Saul on a very important matter. So the two set off from the city. As they go a little from the centre of the town and approach the edge of the houses, Samuel bade Saul send his servant forward so that they might be private and 209 14 Ver. 27. 1 SAMUEL IX., X Ver. 12. alone. Samuel evidently felt the solemnity of the moment ; he saw before him the man who should be the future King of Israel, and he knew that in the conduct of that king lay a great responsibility. And as the servant had passed onward, Samuel said to Saul : ' Stand thou still awhile that I may show thee the Word of God '. There are two things here that I should like you to notice ; the first is the attention which Samuel requires, and the second is the subject on which he spoke. I. The Attention Required. — Samuel asked Saul to send his servant forward that he might — (a) Forget his family affairs, his joys and sorrows, and to concentrate his attention on the subject. In our own case there are joys and sor- rows, there are business affairs that sometimes invade the very sleep and rehearse themselves in the hour ot night. By an effort of will they may be made to pass onward. (b) Stand still awhile. — Samuel requested Saul to ' Stand still awhile '. Let us remember that when the body is quiet and restful it aids the mind in tak- ing in spiritual truth. It is a very desirable thing when listening to the Word of God to let it have its full effect upon the mind ; let it come down like rain into a fleece of wool. Is not this what the Word of God deserves ? When God speaketh His Word let all be silent before Him. If God is speaking, we are to be still. It is desirable to get away from the city into the fields, and there to stand still awhile and to say with Samuel the words he said when he was a little boy: 'Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth'. There are some who are so exceedingly careful about the things of this world that they scarcely give a thought to the things of God. In- form them how they may become rich and famous, and they will pay you a handsome price ; inform them as to the undying things of God's Word, and perhaps they may pass on. II. The Subject of the Message. — Look now at the second point. The Word of God which Samuel had on this occasion to speak to Saul. (a) Mentioned a kingdom which Saul is going to possess and for which he must endeavour to fit him- self. So to us the Word of God says, ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness '. The Word of God by coming to us has made each one of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ a king. Are you so entirely occupied with the business of the present that you are unable to gaze on the throne of the kingdom that is prepai'ed for you ? God calls you to a nobler, higher destiny than can be found in any earthly kingdom. (6) Predicted a change. — Samuel said that there should come a veiy great change upon Saul, and that that change should soon come about. Samuel said that he should journey and the Spirit of the Lord should come upon him. 'Thou shalt join thyself to a company of prophets and shalt be turned into another man.' Can you tell what God will do for you if you are willing and obedient ? Lay hold of the propitiation offered by Christ and, in a higher sense than was possible for Saul, undergo a wonderful and remarkable change. It is the change which should come on account of the love of Christ born in the soul and the spirit of Christ coming to dwell in the heart. Listen to the words of the covenant : ' I will put My spirit within you, I will take away the stony heart and give you a heart of flesh, and in that heart of flesh ye shall live and rejoice before God '. Life is a tangled skein to those who do not seek the guidance of the Word of God, but to those who do it is not so. SELF-RESPECT AND COMPANIONSHIP ' Is Saul also among the prophets ? ' — i Samuel x. 12. The popular interpretation of Saul among the prophets is that Saul had taken a step up. The truth is, the text may mean that he had taken one down. It all depends who the prophets were. I. In these prophets of the time of Saul, when we first meet them, we have the type which prophesying had first assumed on Canaanitish soil. They were, in fact, a species of begging friars, and were held by the people in a contempt which they evidently did their best to deserve. When Saul was found among these so-called prophets he had ceased to respect himself, and when a man does that he must either recover himself or accept moral ruin. II. A man may be a very faulty man, and yet be a genuinely good man. His goodness does not excuse his faults, nor do his faults destroy his claim to good- ness. Let a man have the right to respect himself, and he has that which can take the sting out of his disappointments and the tyranny of victory out of his failures. There is no necessary connexion between a straigy^ife and failure to win the kingdoms of this world, f Pie re may be cases where honesty handicaps a man for a time, but they are comparatively few and short-lived in their operation. But lift the definition of success to higher levels, and I assert without quali- fication that with the right to respect ourselves there can be no failure, and without it there can be no success. III. Saul had ceased to respect himself, and this very probably supplies the explanation of his being found in this questionable company. If you realize that you must surrender something of your better self to be the friend of a certain person, you will be almost sure to establish that friendship at your peril. Whatever the King of Israel might think of his com- pany, the fact that he was in it gave to their worth- lessness a new tenure of existence, and to their wickedness an added licence. He did not make them better men, but they made him a worse man. Human society has no need more pressing than its need of young men and women with moral courage and re- ligious conviction to take up the right attitude to wrong things. — Ambrose Shepherd, Men in the Making, p. 139. 210 Vv. 17-27. 1 SAMUEL X.-XII Ver. 23. References. — IX. 20. — H. 1 layman, Sermons Preached in Rugby School Chapel, p. 29. X. 9.— G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 284. SAUL'S HIDING HIMSELF i Samuel x. 17-27. Dr. W. G. Blaikie remarks on the fact that Saul hid himself and could not be found : ' We do not think the worse of him for this, but rather the better. It is one of the many favourable traits that we find at the outset of his kingly career. . . . Many of the best ministers of Christ have had this feeling when they were called to the Christian ministry. Gregory Nazianzen actually fled to the wilderness after his ordination, and Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in the civil office which he held, tried to turn the people from their choice even by acts of cruelty and severity, after they had called on him to become their bishop.' References. — X. 24. — J. Richardson, A Sermon Preached in Camden Church, No. viii. X. 26. — J. Burns, Sketches of Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 153. 1 THE RELIEF OF JABESH-QILEAD 1 Samuel xi. Of the rejoicing after the relief of Jabesh-Gilead Dr. Blaikie says : ' It was perhaps the happiest occasion in all the reign of Saul. What constituted the chief element of brightness to the occasion was — the sun- shine of heaven. God was there, smiling on His children. There were other elements too. Samuel was there, happy that Saul had conquered, that he had established himself upon the throne, and above all, that he had, in a right noble way, acknowledged God as the author of the victory at Jabesh-Gilead. Saul was there, reaping the reward of his humility, his forbearance, his courage, and his activity. The people were there, proud of their king, proud of his magnifi- cent appearance, but prouder of the supe^^inent qualities that had marked the commencemerr^>f his reign. Nor was the pleas uie of anyone marred by any ugly blot or unworthy deed throwing a gloom over the transaction.' References.— XII. 1-4.— R. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. i. p. 323. XII. 2, 3.— J. R. Macduff, Sermons for the Chris- tian Seasons (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 681. SAMUEL'S DISMISSAL 1 Samuel xii. 12-15. Some one has said, ' In addition to other graces a good man ought to pray for is the grace to resign his office when his work is done '. Samuel was the last of the judges and prophets. He had ruled with conspicuous ability, justice, success. Under his control, it is true, the people had suffered from the attacks of the neighbouring tribes, but defeat had not been due to Samuel's holding the rein of government. I. Samuel himself might be good, righteous, just, but the system he represented was out of date, obsolete. So they desire a king and make their desire known. He is willing to grant their request. He sees it is God's will that he should, soothe king is appointed, and Samuel summons the people to meet him for a farewell address. When they come first he vindicates his character and conduct, wishes like a brave and good man to meet those who are dissatisfied. He briefly reviews the history of the past, bringing to their notice one clear fact that when they had sinned they suffered, when they repented and turned to God, were saved. And so he says it will be in the future. Do not depend upon a change of govern- ment. Whether Samuel judges or Saul reigns, if they did right, the blessing of God would be theirs. II. That was the lesson then that in the far-off past Samuel taught. We are reminded very fre- quently by statesmen and others of the awful struggle against poverty, misery. We are also being con- stantly reminded of those who suffer in other ways owing to the stress of modern life, those, for instance, who because they are poor, have to work 'midst un- wholesome surroundings and under insanitary condi- tions. And some of those who most frequently remind us of these things tell us that it is the com- petition system that is at fault ; that instead of competition there should be co-operation ; that socialism should be the system under which we live instead of the method of government that now obtains. The need is deep and great for reform, but whether we have a government of Samuel or Saul, whether the present system of private capital be re- placed by a system of collective ownership by the State or community of all the sources and instru- ments of production and distribution, we shall not get rid of suffering, wrong, oppression, till we can get rid of sin. — E. J. Miller, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv. p. 62. References. — XII. 13. — H. Hensley Henson, Preaching to the Times, p. 33. Spurgeon, Ten Sermons, p. 80. R. Heber, Parish Sermons, vol. ii. p. 25. XII. 14. — G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 125. XII. 19.— W. H. Hutchings, Sermon- Sketches, p. 180. XII. 20.— J. Keble, Sermons After Trinity, part i. p. 105. GOD'S SECOND BEST 'God forbid that I should sin in ceasing to pray for you.' — 1 Samuel xii. 23. If a man has blundered or played the fool in the management of his life, is there a second chance? God not only approves of a man's penitence, but assists it. But to see this one needs to keep in mind a process and a principle at work in the world, ' God's Second Best'. I. Israel's First Best. — In the earlier stages of its national life Israel had no king, but experienced again and again marvellous smoothings of its way by Pro- vidence, to convince the people that they were under God's care, and make it easy for them to obey Him. II. Israel's Second Best. — The process of degenera- tion. The repairing process. Silently, quietly God builds up the walls they have broken down ; He re- pairs the waste places ; He creates out of the very debris of their failure a new sort of opportunity, and offers the remainder of life for reclamation and trans- figuration. 211 Vv. 11, 12. 1 SAMUEL XIII Ver. 14. HI. God's Second Best in Modern Life. — Men lose health through violation of nature's laws. But a re- pairing process is at work in our bodies— the physical expression of God's marvellous patience — and through that process a second best is offered to men. IV. The Cross as a Second Best. — God in His loving mercy came to man in his fall from innocence, with a design of salvation and repair of which the centre was the cruel Cross — God's most terrible, amaz- ing ' second best ' — and through that Cross has been repairing human life and bringing it to sainthood. Even beyond saintship is a third experience, in which we shall have to look for the last and truest defini- tion of the phrase ' God's Second Best '. — G. A. John- ston Ross, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxv. p. 321. References. — XII. 23. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 49. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 333. J. Keble, Sermons Academical and Occasional, p. 127. XIII. 3. — J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. i. p. 269. WAITING FOR SAMUEL 'And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou earnest not within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash ; therefore said I, The Philistines •will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the Lord : I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offer- ing.'— i Samuel xiii. ii, 12. I. A crisis which would try a stronger man than Saul showed himself to be had arisen. He had just made a bold stroke, and with a detachment out of his 3000 reserved men had driven out the Philistine garrison, quartered on his own tribe in Benjamin, it would have been better for him not to strike than to follow it up. But he finds himself at Gilgal confronted by an increased and increasing band of Philistines, with his own army, an unarmed and disorganized rabble, panic-stricken, demoralized, and constantly deserting. And here he was hampered by a tiresome restriction put upon him by Samuel, to wait for him seven days, until he came to offer sacrifice for him and the army. He waits seven days, in which his position was getting worse and worse, and Samuel did not come. At the end of the seven days he would wait no longer. At the end of the time appointed — directly after — Samuel came. We know Samuel's verdict. It was this — ' Thou hast done foolishly. The kingdom shall not continue.' II. I am speaking to those who have heard the call of God, and who have answered to a mysterious vocation ; to men in whom their friends have seen, it may be, a natural aptitude for the sacred profession of the priesthood, who amidst such modest shrinking and sense of the greatness of the issues, have laid their powers at the disposal of the Almighty God, and have consecrated to Him any special faculty or talents which would the more fit them for His ser- vice. You are conscious that you are raised up to be leaders, directors, organizers, as you watch the passes which lead up from the plains and marshal your forces and count the odds. And one great advantage of a festival like this is that it recalls us to the council-chamber of God, and here, before the altar, bids us remember that we are under orders, and are carrying out the details of a campaign with which we are very imperfectly acquainted ; and that the great danger we have to avoid is independent action start- ing from self-will, and impatience which refuses to wait for slower, but matured plans of God. ' Only look at the difficulty with which I am confronted. The secularist hall is full, the public-houses are fuller still. The churchmen, so-called, follow me trembling. And yet Samuel tells me to wait. Wait ? I have had enough of waiting. I must do something at once, something more human, more up to date.' But had Samuel no scheme for rallying Israel. Do we really suppose that a great general thinks the battle lost if he cannot disperse at once a local pressure ? Look deeper, and you will see his method to be this, where we should seek to improve man's condition, he seeks to improve man ; that as the evil is deep- seated the remedy must be thorough. Improve man, and we shall improve his condition ; believing in this the Church waits confidently for Samuel's methods, and is not diverted from her purpose by an impetu- ous Saul. — W. C. E. Newbolt, Words of Exhorta- tion, p. 118. A MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 'The Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart.' — 1 Samuel xiii. 14. Let us examine the meaning of and see in this text, what way David could deserve it. Let us compare the character of David with that of Saul. Saul was wilful, disobedient. This text gives us an account of why he was rejected by God. Samuel had desired him to wait, and had said that he would come and offer j^htt offerings unto the Lord. The king would not wl^^and he himself then offered sacrifices. Here J was disobedience of the worst kind. Contrast the character of these two men and we shall see that, although some passages in the Psalmist's life were I certainly very bad, and some in Saul's very good, we | shall see that the roots of their characters were differ- I ent. The life of David was one of faith and obedi- ence, and the life of Saul one of godless independence. I I. The Life of David. — His first appearance in \ public exhibits his zeal, his true character. (a) His Combat with Goliath. — He viewed Go- liath's insult in a light in which it was never seen by that godless Saul. It was defiance of the living Jehovah, and when he heard the defiance of the giant, he felt himself at once the champion of Jehovah. He saw Jehovah on his side, and knew that he should prevail. Few sentences are more striking for their simplicity and their courage than those in which David expresses before Saul, and then again before the giant himself, the ground upon which his courage depended. Here you see the true metal shining forth in his character, faith in God and zeal for His honour. And you will readily allow that in all His conduct 212 Ver. 14. 1 SAMUEL XII I., XV Vv. 24, 30. faith in God forms such a leading feature as to make his character very like that which we should imagine to be especially after God's own heart. (b) Regard for the Lord's Anointed. — If you look at the early days of David you will find another beautiful characteristic of him. He was anointed to be king over Israel as a boy, so that he must have known he was appointed to succeed Saul. Saul per- secuted David, and he was obliged several times to flee for his life. Saul was several times in David's power, and yet he said : ' How wast thou not afraid to stretch forth thy hand to destroy the Lord's anointed ? ' (c) In the Psalms of David we see a more vivid picture than could perhaps be anywhere else found of a mind waiting upon God, looking away from itself, trusting in Him, blessing Him in trouble, and blessing Him in prosperity, of a mind of which the motive power is faith in God and submission to Him. After his fall, when repentance and sorrow had en- abled him to see his sin in its true colours, when he bemoans his sin, it is not his sin in any of the inferior lights in which it might be viewed. All other views of sin vanish before this, that it was an offence against God. A man's vice may bring misery to himself, it may ruin his health and bring him to beggary, but he who looks at wickedness as God looks at it, must see it in the light in which it appeared to David. II. The Character of Saul. — He, too, was brave. What, then, spoiled his character ? It was simply the opposite of what I have described. When Samuel came not, he must needs be priest himself. When Goliath came out and defied the armies of Israel, he did not offer to go out himself. He offered a reward to any one who would meet the giant, but it never occurred to him that the Philistines had defied Jehovah, and that he who went out was the avenger of Israel, and would have the vicjjto' which belonged to the champion of God. Saul ^Psent to destroy the Amalekites. He kept the best part of the spoil and then blamed the people. When Saul found himself deserted by the Spirit of the Lord, he must needs have access to unlawful means of gaining, as he believed, help in his trouble. He never thought of asking help of the oracle of the Lord. These are some of the features of Saul's life, and without wishing to depreciate such good qualities as he possessed, I think we may justly hold him forth as a specimen of a man self-dependent, wilful, strikingly deficient in those qualities which formed the beauty of David's character— faith in God, humble waiting upon Him, and submission to His divine will. When we contrast the two characters we can easily see that, without speaking lightly of his great sin, we may nevertheless say in truth that the character, in the main features of it, was after the mind of God, that David may rightly be spoken of as a man after God's own heart. References. — XIII. 13, 14. — Bishop H. Goodwin, Parish Sermons, p. 13(5. XIII. 14. — R. D. B. Rawnsley, Sermons for the Christian Year, p. 300. XIII. 19.— J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 31. XIII. 20. — Spurgeon, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 322. XIV. 6. — J. G. Greenhough, Comradeship and Character, p. 187. XIV. 23. — H. Bonner, Sermons and Lectures, 1900, p. 140. XV. 2, 3, 6 — J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 204. OBEDIENCE i Samuel xv. 10-23. Obedience is a sacrifice— better, because more pro- found than any other sacrifice can be. ' It is much easier,' Matthew Henry remarks, ' to bring a bullock or a lamb to be burnt upon the altar than to bring every high thought into obedience to God, and make the will subject to His will.' Sacrifice is as the pre- sents which Hiram sent to Solomon ; but obedience is like the artist whom he sent to remain in Jerusalem and do the finest work of the Temple — for obedience is a living power, which returns from every altar stronger than when it went. When an officer of Engineers urged that the direc- tions he had received were impossible to execute, the Duke of Wellington replied : ' Sir, I did not ask your opinion ; I gave you my orders, and I expect them to be obeyed '. References. — XV. 16. — J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 73. XV. 22. — H. Alford, Pudsea Chapel Sermons, vol. iii. p. 390. XV. 23. — Ibid. Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. ii. p. 44. XV. 24. — J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, part i. p. 105. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No. 113. SAUL'S 'I HAVE SINNED' ' And Sanl said unto Samuel, I have sinned : for I have trans- gressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words : because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. . . . Then he said, I have sinned : yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord thy God.' — 1 Samuel xv. 24, 30. Saul said ' I have sinned ' oftener than any other person in the Bible. Was he, therefore, the truest penitent ? Was he a penitent at all ? His was the case of a backsliding man ; backsliding still at the moment when he said them ; on the decline — going down the slope of sin — at the same time that those godly words were on his lips. That is the characteristic, and there lies the bane of Saul's ' I have sinned '. He was on the incline ; going further and further ; lower and lower ; and the words, spirit- less and untrue, only precipitated him farther. Why was his ' I have sinned ' so barren ? I. A Lack of Reality. — His words had no reality. There was no religion in them. They failed all the tests of a true confession. It was simply remorse, the child of fear. It curried favour with man, and it sought to appease God for a temporal end. II. He Implicated Others — Now observe, for your warning, some of the marks of a spurious and false confession. Saul's did not isolate itself. True re- pentance always does isolate itself. The penitent is alone with God in the matter of his sin. It is ' my- self. He implicates no other. Saul said, ' I and the people ' ; and ' we '. Saul did more. He did what, from the time of Adam, a convicted but unhumbled heart always does, he skulked : he acknowledged the 213 Ver. 18. 1 SAMUEL XVI Ver. 18. fact ; but he transmitted the blame. ' I feared the people, and I obeyed their voice.' It is the very opposite to confession. Confession is always generous. III. Would Stand Well with Men.— It is plain, also, that Saul thought more of how he should stand with man than how he stood with God. 'Yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord thy God.' For man to honour him is just what the real penitent thinks nothing of. What is all that man can say to a mind sensible of God's regard, and that is dealing with God and eternity ? What an impertinence ! Rather is not human honour, at such a moment, always dis- tasteful to a man ? IV. No Relationship to God. — And observe that ' Thy God '. The Christian always says, ' My God '. ' Notwithstanding all I have done, my God.' The appropriation is as necessary to the faith as the faith is necessary to the grace. However you have sinned, always say, ' My God '. V. Gave a Religious Cloak to his Sin. — And what was the worst of all ? Though Saul said, ' I have sinned,' he gave a religious cloak to his sin ! ' We did it to sacrifice to the Lord.' Pious phrase- ology is very often the bane of a good faith. References. — XVI. 1-13. — W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 1. XVI. 2. — F. Corbett, Preacher's Year, p. 125. XVI. 4. — J. Aspiiiall, Parish Sermons (2nd Series), p. 71- XVI. 6, 7.— James Moffatt, The Second Things of Life, p. 48. XVI. 6-13.— C. Perren, Sermon Outlines, p. 188. XVI. 7.— S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 84. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Common Life Religion, p. 197. XVI. 11.— A. P. Stanley, Sermons for Children, p. 32. XVI. 11, 12. — J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children (5th Series), p. 1. XVI. 13. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 39. Bishop How, Plain Words to Children, p. 68. XVI. 14.— Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons, p. 297. I. Williams, Characters of the Old Testament, p. 171. R. D. B. Rawnsley, A Course of Sermons for the Christian Year, p. 281. XVI. 14-23.— W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 13. A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY ' Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Beth-lehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him.' — i Samuel xvi. i8. King Saul wished to engage a court minstrel. There is not a single historical personage before the Christian era of whom we know so much as we do of David. In our passage we meet with him as still but a young man; and there are five distinct things mentioned about him, which you may find it interesting and useful to consider. I. The Bible is emphatic in telling us that he was a remarkably good-looking young man. A splendid fellow, thoroughly manly in his bearing. There was nothing effeminate about him. The body, no doubt, is but the tabernacle, the shell ; but do not despise it ; it bears the stamp and image of God. II. His Pastime. — Every sensible man must have some pastime. We cannot always be working. Well, David's pastime was music. He had evidently quite a genius for it. David consecrated this great gift of his to the highest ends, and he found music to be most enjoyable when it was linked with sacred themes. Sacred music is the grandest of all music. III. His Patriotism. — If ever a man loved his country, it was he. His heroic fearlessness of danger was constantly put to the proof. Where his country's interests were at stake, his life was at its service. No mere ambitious self-seeker was David ; he was as genuine a patriot as ever lived. A healthy and un- selfish public spirit needs to be cultivated. The first and most obvious duty which a man owes to the commonwealth is to see that he is no burden to it. In fact, it is in vigilant industry and sound common sense, employed about a man's daily calling, that he makes his first contribution to the nation's wealth and weal. IV. His Prudence. — The text describes him as ' prudent in matters,' i.e. a young man of sound j udgment, of sterling common sense. This is a wonder- ful recommendation to a man, no matter what kind of office he has to fill. Next to piety there is no endowment more valuable than what in England goes by the name of good common sense. V. His Piety — ' the Lord is with him '. This was his noblest recommendation ; he carried God with him into all the minutest details of life. No one can intelligently read his sacred songs without seeing that the central spring of his religious life was humble dependence upon the Divine Deliverer who was one day to suffer and die for the sins of men. — J. Thaw Davidson, The City Youth, p. 18. THE CHARACTER OF DAVID ' Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Beth-lehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, ana prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him.' — i Samuel xvi. i8. How m^Uold are the ways of the Spirit, how various the grac^which He imparts ; what depth and width is there in that moral truth and virtue for which we are created ! Contrast one with another the Scripture saints ; how different are they, yet how alike ! how fitted for their respective circumstances, yet how unearthly, how settled and composed in the faith and fear of God ! As in the Services, so in the patterns of the Church, God has met all our needs, all our frames of mind. ' Is any afflicted ? let him pray ; is any merry? let him sing Psalms.' Is any in joy or in sorrow ? there are saints at hand to encourage and guide him. There is Abraham for nobles, Job for men of wealth and merchandise, Moses for patriots, Samuel for rulers, Elijah for reformers, Joseph for those who rise into distinction ; there is Daniel for the forlorn, Jeremiah for the persecuted, Hannah for the downcast, Ruth for the friendless, the Shunammite for the matron, Caleb for the soldier, Boaz for the farmer, Mephibosheth for the subject ; but none is vouchsafed to us in more varied lights, and with more abundant and more affecting lessons, whether in his history or in his writings, than he whose eulogy is contained in the words of the text, as cunning in 214 Ver. 23. 1 SAMUEL XVI., XVII., XIX Vv. 18-24. playing, and a mighty valiant man, and prudent in matters, and comely in person, and favoured by Almighty God. — J. H. Newman. DAVID'S MUSIC AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SAUL i Samuel xvi. 23. Dr. Blaikie says : ' Of the influence of music in remedy- ing disorders of the nerves there is no want of evi- dence. "Bochart has collected many passages from profane writers which speak of the medicinal effects of music on the mind and body, especially as appeasing anger and soothing and pacifying a troubled spirit " (Speaker's Commentary). A whole book was written on the subject by Caspar Lcescherus, Professor of Divinity at Wittenberg (a.d. 1688), Kitto and other writers have added more recent instances. It is said of Charles IX of France that after the massacre of St. Bartholomew his sleep was disturbed by nightly horrors, and he could only be composed to rest by a symphony of singing boys. Philip V of Spain, being seized with deep dejection of mind that un- fitted him for all public duties, a celebrated musician was invited to surprise the king by giving a concert in the neighbouring apartment to his majesty's with the effect that the king roused himself from his lethargy and resumed his duties.' DAVID'S HARP 1 Samuel xvi. 23. In truth, the great Elements we know of are no mean comforters : the open Sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown — the Air is our robe of State — the Earth is our throne ; and the Sea a mighty minstrel playing before it — able, like David's harp, to make such a one as you forget almost the tempest cares of life. — Keats (to Jane Reynolds, 1817). References. — XVII. 36. — S. Gregory, HnirJkSti-irii Ship, p. 56. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1253. ^^VII. 37. — E. A. Askew, Sermons Preached in Greystoke Church. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays After Trinity, part i. p. 105. XVII. 42. — W. Brock, Midsummer Morning Sermons, p. 173. XVII. 47. — H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 61. XVII. 48. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sachville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 192. XVII.— R. Lorimer, Bible Studies in Life and Truth, p. 211. W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 26. XVII. 50. — R. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. Ii. p. 254. XVII. 55. — E. A. Askew, Sermons Preached in Greystohe Church, p. 189. WHOSE SON ART THOU, YOUNQ MAN? * Whose son art thou, young man ? ' — 1 Samuel xvh. 58. When this shepherd boy entered the royal presence with the ghastly trophy, his fingers clutching the hair of Goliath's head, the king looked at him with admiring wonderment, and put the plain, straightfor- ward question of my text, ' Whose son art thou, young man ? ' It was natural that Saul should wish to know something of the antecedents of so brave a youth. I. If there is anything more utterly contemptible than for one who has risen a bit in the world to be ashamed of his humble origin, it is the conduct of him who ridicules his low-born brother. I admire the prompt, straightforward answer which David gave to the king : ' I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Beth-lehemite.' Sometimes we hear it remarked with a sneer and a curl of the lip concerning some young man who is doing well, ' Oh, he has risen from the ranks'. Well, the more honour to him, if it is so ; and the more shame upon the silly, contemptible snobbishness that could be guilty of such an utterance. II. We shall not talk of rank now, but of character. Let me tell you that the purest blood this world has ever known is that of a Christian ancestry. It throws all other nobility and aristocracy into the shade. It is but too plain that grace does not run in the blood. The Bible itself teaches us this. A long line of Christian inheritance is something to rejoice in. ' Whose son art thou, young man ? ' III. I am not afraid to put the question even to those who have had no such advantage. I thank God that I have seen many a clean bird come out of a foul nest. If ever a man might have been supposed to have had bad blood in his veins, it was Hezekiah, who was the son of one of the worst monarchs that ever reigned over Israel. And yet he turned out a devout and holy man of God. IV. I tell you that whether you realize it or not, you have, each of you, royal blood in your veins. Your pedigree traces back to the King of kings. St. Luke goes right up to the fountain-head when he finishes his genealogical table thus : ' Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God '. Awake to the glorious fact, and claim your high inheritance — J. Thain Davidson, The City Youth, p. 126. References.— XVII. 58. — R. D. B. Rawnsley, Sermons in Country Churches, p. 96. XVIII. 1-30.— W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 39. XVIII. 4.— J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 227. XVIII. 17- — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 250. RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM, TRUE AND FALSE 1 Samuel xix. 18-24. This is a sort of subject that needs to bethought out and discreetly treated. And yet it can never be made quite plain. It goes off into mystery on every side ; for the action of the nervous system is involved in this, and the whole question of contagious emotion which not the best physiologists thoroughly understand. But without going into physiological questions, there are here things very plain which ought to be known by all intelligent Christians. I. There is a religious excitation or excitement which may not have any moral quality or influence whatever. It is not affected — it is real. It is not insincere ; it is sincere. I mean a person who really is lifted up and carried along with a rush of sacred enthusiasm. He cries for mercy, and he sings loudly of salvation. I do not say that all excitement is use- less, but I say that there is an excitement that only amounts to this. God forbid that we should for a 215 Vv. 18-24. 1 SAMUEL XIX., XX., XXIV Ver. 10. moment deny that there are cases in which people get real permanent good. But the excitement is only the accompaniment ; it is not the change. The only thing of real value is the exercise of conscience, and en- lightenment of the understanding, the turning of the affections and the will to God in Christ and to righteousness. II. The degree in which religious emotion over- powers the body is generally proportioned to the ignorance of the mind, or to its alienation or estrangement from God. David joined the company of these prophets without any excitement or frenzy. Why was that ? Because David had more of the matter in him than Saul. He was a man of God himself, and the religious emotions flowed through him without resistance — found in him a congenial re- cipient. But Saul was in an evil mood. Envy and murder were in his heart, and when this pure sacred impulse came upon him it met with the stronger re- sistance. Then there was this bodily manifestation, this falling down upon the ground, which far from being a sign of grace, was rather indicative of the lower moral state in which the man was found, and the resistance that his mind and heart made to the spirit upon him. III. If this is right, and surely this is right — it is historical — this case should teach those persons who have at various times made a great ado over prostra- tions and trances and long fastings as signs of the work of grace to be somewhat more cautious in their utterances. These things occur almost always in the case of a morbid hysterical temperament, in which case they are only a sign of disease, not of health ; or in the case of a very ignorant person who is over- whelmed with things of which he has no intelligent conception ; or in cases where there has been a very awful estrangement from God, and the Word of His grace finds an obstruction. The Bible teaches us to be calm and fervent, fervent and calm. Let the evidence of our Christian faith and character be found not in any passing mood of excitement, but in the moral excellence that we exhibit in the fruit of the light and of the spirit that we daily bring forth. — D. Feaser, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. n. p. 178. References. — XIX. 24. — F. D. Maurice, Prophets and Kings, p. 14. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1870. XIX. W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 52. THE CHARACTER OF JONATHAN i Samuel xx. ' One knows not,' says Dr. Blaikie, ' whether most to wonder at the faith of Jonathan or the sweetness of his nature. It is David, the poor outlaw, with hardly a man to stand by him, that appears to Jonathan the man of power, the man who can dispose of all lives and sway all destinies ; while Jonathan, the King's son and confidential adviser, is somehow reduced to helplessness and unable even to save him- self. But was there ever such a transaction entered into with such sweetness of temper? The calmness of Jonathan in contemplating the strange reverse of fortune, both to himself and David, is exquisitely beautiful ... it is manly and glorious while it is meek and humble ; such a combination of the noble and the submissive as was shown afterwards, in its highest form, in the one perfect example of our Lord Jesus Christ.' References. — XX.-XXII. — W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 65. XX. 3. — H. Woodcock, Sermon Outlines, p. 252. J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 193. XX. 25.— Herbert Windross, The Life Victorious, p. 33. XXI. 8, 9. — Ibid. Sermons for tlie Church Year, vol. ii. p. 15. XXII. 2. — H. J. Buxton, God's Heroes, p. 109. XXIII. 14-16. — J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 338. XXIII. 17. — John Watson, Respectable Sins, p. 253. XXIII. 19, 20. — Ibid. Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 112. XXIII. 28.— W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 79. XXIV. — R. Lorimer, Bible Studies in Life and Truth, p. 231. W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel. A PROVIDENCE OR A TEMPTATION? ' I will not put forth mine hand against my lord ; for he is the Lord's anointed.' — i Samuel xxiv. io. The touching and picturesque incident here related is an extract from the life of an outlaw. It took place amid the wild deep ravines that overhang the oasis of Engedi. This spot, situate about half-way down the western shore of the Dead Sea, owes its name, as it does its luxuriant growth of vegetation, to a fountain which rises from the limestone rock and falls in long silver ribbands to the sloping plain be- low. There were many reasons why David should take refuge here. The deep gorges and bleak hills were safe. Wood and water abounded. The solitude had its own charm. But no long time elapsed till the solitude was broken rudely by the warlike in- vasion of King Saul. With a fierce band of troops he bad hurried out to seize the fugitive alive or dead, for just ti«i there burned in him a fever-heat of malignan^^nvy. Too often the prey had escaped his grasp, but this time he would make sure. This time the expedition must finish its work. It was a skilful plan, likely enough to be successful, if man were the only partner in the transaction. But God cannot safely be forgotten in our schemings ; and although He may not always melt the heart of men like Saul, He finds many ways of tying their hands. So this chapter has lessons worth pondering by all who move amid the changing passions of human life. Note the greatness of David's temptation. To let Saul escape would be madness and impiety ; what had happened was as good as a command to rise and strike home. Deal him the fatal blow here and now. Creep up behind him where he lies unconscious, and smite him to the heart. It was a temptation all but overwhelming. Parti- cularly for an Eastern mind, it did look extremely like a Divinely given opportunity. David had a long list of grievances to settle, and one thrust of a dirk would pay them all. But what is the principle that rules his action, curbing both the savage purposes of those around 216 Ver. 7. 1 SAMUEL XXVII I., XXX Ver. 6. him and the hot fever racing in his own veins ? What but this, that men must not go faster to their goal than the will of God permits ? Do not take short cuts to happiness, if to do it you have to leave the high road of rectitude and mercy. It was a promise of God to David that one day he should wear the crown, but he would not step up to it over Saul's dead body. He would not be king before God's time at such a price as that ! How often men ruin their lives by, as we say, ' playing Providence ' to their own career. What looks like Providence may be a snare of the devil. So beware of that policy on which you can embark only by soiling your clear sense of right. Beware of side-paths that lead through the mire. Stick to the highway of the King, and leave the future issues in His keeping. Wave back the eager or contemptuous arguments of others when they plead for your real worldly interest, or cry that you are a fool to be so scrupulous ; and say with brave Nehemiah, and in his reliance on a higher will, ' So did not I, because of the fear of God '. — H. R. Mackin- tosh, Life on God's Plan, p. 256. References. — XXV. 1. — W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 110. XXV. 10, 11.— H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Children's Bread, p. 113. XXVI.— W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 95. XXVll. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 439. XXVII. -XXXI.— W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 199. SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR 'Then said Saul unto bis servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.' — i Samuel xxviii. 7. I. How Valued and Beneficent Presences may be Withdrawn. — What pathos there is in the fact that on the eve of dreaded battle Saul has not his friend, his teacher, his pastor, to consult. Samuel was dead. Samuel had been everything to Saul. But^aul had not treated him well. He had sjighted his Wd friend. Saul would have given a great deal to have had his re- jected and grieved friend now, but ' Samuel was dead '. II. How a Man may Cut Himself Off from Divine Influences. — ' When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not.' May we get so forlornly far ? Yes, we may so sin and sin and sin, we may so fatally harden ourselves, that God will have nothing to do with us. III, How Low a Man may Sink by Sin.— Is this Saul ? Yes — in ruins. (a) He is physically and mentally enfeebled. You see that by the fear and trembling which seizes him as he looks across from Gilboa to Shunem and sees the Philistine camp. His sins have so wrought on him that he is in a state of collapse. (6) Saul is now doing what once he condemned. Early in his reign he put out those that had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land. Now he is actu- ally proposing to consult one of the obnoxious held. (c) Having given up God Saul is compelled to re- sort to strange methods. He — the Kingof Israel — is on the way to consult a woman who has a familiar spirit. IV. See how the Tragedy Culminates. — Saul's servants tell him that at Endor there is a woman re- puted to have ' a familiar spirit '. Saul confronts the wild old creature at her cave door, a diabolical in- spiration seems to be upon Saul, for he not only asks the witch to ' divine by the familiar sphit ' but he goes so far as to beg her to practise necromancy and to read the future by means of the dead. The leering scoundrel says, ' whom shall I bring up unto thee ? ' The infatuated Saul, all trepid, shaking with uncon- trollable excitement, cries ' Bring me up Samuel '. No description is given of the arts the witch used. But the issue is plainly stated. 'The woman saw Samuel,' and at the same time she discovered that her interlocutor was King Saul. Saul perceived it was Samuel. He falls overwhelmed and obeisant. And the sphit of the seer cries, ' Why hast thou dis- quieted me to bring me up ? ' Saul tells his woeful tale. Samuel assures Saul that he can do nothing in his behalf, seeing God has become his adversary because of his sins. Then he adds this prophecy, ' To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me '. V. From this Seance let us Learn — (a) How God confounds evil-doers. Little thought Saul that the scene in Endor's cave would be so tragi- cally real. (0) How near is the spirit world ; strangely soon did the spirit form appear. The world unseen is close to us. (c) Men seem to retain in the spirit world the appearance they have on earth. Samuel's form was identical with that he had when here. (d) God often gives solemn intimations concerning eternity ' To-morrow '. Saul and his sons were to die. The Almighty forewarns them. (e) Mercy rejoices over judgment in God. Samuel said to Saul, ' To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me'. 'With me.' And in what part of the spirit world was Samuel ? Samuel was in immortal and ineffable bliss. Saul and his sons were to be with Samuel. I think that this can only mean that Saul was in his few re- maining hours to repent, and once more to receive ' the root of the matter ' into his nature. Then when death destroyed his body his pardoned and purified soul was to be received into paradise. He who said to the dying robber, ' To-day shalt thou be with Me,' allows Samuel to say to the stricken Saul, ' To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me '. — Dinsdale T. Young, Neglected People of the Bible, p. 74. References.— XXVIII. 6.— J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 80. XXVIII. 13.— E. A. Askew, Sermons Preached, in Greystoke Church, p. 21. XXVIII. 15.— G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 344. XXIX. 8.— J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 256. XXX. 4-6.— Ibid. Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 555. THE GOLDEN ART OF SELF- ENCOURAGE- MENT ' But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'— 1 Samuel xxx. 6. ' He ran to his cordial ' is the sententious comment of John Trapp. He sorely needed a cordial. What 217 Ver. 6. 1 SAMUEL XXX., XXXI mercy that he knew where the cordial was ! He dis- covered it in the heart of God. David's soul was overwhelmed within him. Every prospect was doleful. Black skies frowned over his head. He was exhausted. All the springs seemed dried up. 'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.' Yes, He knew his cordial, and in the exigent hour he ran to it. Here we have often, all of us, a great community with David. We cannot follow him in some of his supremely exultant moods, but in his depression and depletion we have a strong affinity with him. We are one with him in the deep and dire need of en- couragement. I. Seasons for the Exercise of this Qolden Art. — We need to be proficient in this art (1) amid per- sonal sorrow ; (2) in social distress ; (3) in depression ; (4) when the results of our evil past come on ; (5) when old age gathers upon us. II. Reasons for the Development of this Qolden Art. — We need to encourage ourselves in the Lord our God because of the powerlessness of human help. How little we can do for ourselves, and how little others can do for us in the critical hours of life ! It is not in man to strengthen himself with effec- tual strength. Experience shows the illusiveness of mortal forces. When Ziklag lies in ruins whither shall David turn but to God ? III. Methods of Practising this Golden Art. — How shall we encourage ourselves in the Lord our God ? We must do it (1) by prayer ; (2) by the realization of God we encourage ourselves in Him. To sit down amid the shadows and contemplate our loving Lord is to be restored in soul ; (3) by recol- lecting the saints of the past ; (4) by searching the Scriptures. IV. Benefits which this Golden Art Educes. — They reap a wealthy harvest who encourage them- selves in the Lord their God. Solid comfort is theirs ! When we address ourselves to God He wonderfully soothes our sorrow. ' No marvel that God remembered David in all his troubles,' says John Trapp, ' since in all his troubles David remem- bered God.' The Lord is to us, in this matter, as we are to Him. If we remember Him He will not fail to remember us. Wondrous solace our God affords. It is unspeakable. Deeper than the depths of grief it penetrates. In a thousand ways God comforteth the lowly. — Dinsdale T. Young, The Gospel of the Left Hand, p. 97. 'References. — -XXX. 6. — C. Bradley, The Christian Life, p. 239. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 195. XXX. 6-8. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1606. XXX. 18.— C. Bradley, The Christian Life, p. 225. XXX. 24.— M. G. Glazebrook, Prospice, p. 157. XXX. 24, 25.— J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 313. THE DEATH OF ISRAEL'S FIRST KING i Samuel xxxi. Saul's death was neither more nor less than suicide ; the death of all deaths the most loathsome and despised of men : of all deaths the only one that men call cowardly. It was a great historical event, mean- ing much to the nation which saw its first king thus sadly fall. It was the end of Saul's kingdom : his sons and all his family, and with them, all his hopes, died with him that night on Mount Gilboa. And it is still a conspicuous moral, as well as historical event, on which we may well pause to look across the ages. Saul brought down thousands with him when he fell, but he had been lowering the tone of the spiritual nation almost from the time when he began his reign. He had insulted and abashed and driven away the spiritual genius that brooded over that holy land, and he had dragged the armies of Jehovah down to the level of the armies of the nations around. And as he had been in his life in the land, so was he when he died at Gilboa For ' There was' the shield of the mighty vilely cast away— the shield of Saul — as of one not anointed of the Lord'. There are three points which indicate the departure of Saul from the path of peace and duty. I. He had not long reigned until he began to separate himself from good men in the land. He was soon separated from Samuel, the best, the noblest, the representative good man of the time. He was soon separated from David, the man of the future, the man after God's own heart, and who desired to do only God's will. He was soon cruel and fierce in his wrath, sWring one by one the priests of the Lord. II. Trren we find that he was separated from God. He prayed to God and God gave him no answer. He was separated from Him who is the source of all light and the source of all strength. He asked in vain for God's guidance, and then called in vain for the dead Samuel. III. Last of all Saul got separated from himself; from his own best nature. There was a great chasm in his nature, between his evil and his controlling better self; and thus he was left to the wreck and ruin which his own worst nature prompted. Such is the spiritual history of him whose tragic life we have now read to its close. — Hugh Black, The British Weekly Pulpit, vol. n. p. 57. 218 THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL References.— I. 9.— S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 19. L 17.— W. H. Hutchings, Sermon- Sketches, p. 192. I. 17, 18.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1694. ' Also he bade them teach the children of Judah the use of the bow.' — 2 Samuel i. i8. I. The Song of the Bow. — We never come to this song of the bow without being struck afresh with its beauty, its pathos, its lofty patriotism, its whole- hearted grief, its tender recollection of a dead friend, and, perhaps, best of all, its generous forgetfulness of all that is bad in a dead enemy. The news has just been brought to David that his arch-enemy Saul is dead ; and David, anointed by God to be Saul's suc- cessor, has been for seven years outcast. An outlaw in daily fear of his life, surrounded by a company of men desperate as he, and yet he has never lifted his hand against his enemy because he was God's anointed, and, in his loyalty to God, David forbore to slay his enemy, even on that occasion when he had him in his hand. And now, at last, the end has come — David is free from persecution, he is free, at last, to take his long-appointed place as king. But when the truth is established he and his six hundred outlaws stand, with their clothes rent, mourning, and weeping, and fast- ing. Then at last David rouses himself to action, and he finds vent for his grief in two ways — first of all in the exaction of the life of the unhappyonessenger, according to the fierce temper of those times ; and then in that touching song of lamentation to which he gives the title ' The Song of the Bow '. You will remember, I am sure, as David must have remembered as he sang it, how Jonathan in the days gone by gave to him his bow as a present, and how it was by the use of the bow, too, that Jonathan warned David to flee from the jealous anger of Saul, and so the first command of the new king was to order that ' The Song of the Bow ' should be taught to all God's people from henceforth to keep green the memory of Saul and his son. II. The Note of the Song. — This is the beautiful note of the song. The excitement of action is over, and all suffer because their natural head is cut off", and the singer suffers because, beyond the sorrow at the death of his early benefactor and of his truly loved friend, he has only recollection now of the valour and splendour of the departed king. ' Tell it not in Gath,' etc. His heart is sorry, and he calls on nature to join him in his mourning. ' Ye mountains of Gilboa,' etc. Even the earth should feel with him, he thinks. In his passion of sorrow he calls upon the beautiful fertile country to go into mourning and never again to produce tempting harvests for sorrow that nature should feel that the arms of the dead king can no longer give battle. But, if he is dead, still there is comfort in thinking of those brave men as he knew them. Some comfort to describe their prowess, their love for one another, their faithful comradeship. As you read all this, hundreds of years afterwards, in the light of the twentieth century, you think the praise of the king unnatural and stilted. At any rate, the words in which he commemorated his dead friend are beautiful indeed. Then comes that strongly generous reminder of how greatly Saul's successful wars had benefited the nation — 'Ye daughters of Israel,' etc. He praises Jonathan for his bravery and skill in war, and for his fidelity to his father, and the singer gives a tender thought to his love for himself — ' I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan '. You cannot but see the beauty of the song ; you can- not but feel that in their defeat and death Saul and Jonathan are happy. III. The Purpose of the Song.— Yet this song is not religious poetry, it is not a psalm, it is not a hymn. The Name of God never once occurs in it ; it is simply a battle song. But God has put it in for a purpose, as He has put everything in the Bible. Nothing in this book refers only to the circumstances of the moment ; all that is there is a teaching or a warning, a reproof or a blessing, for all time. And so here, underlying the sorrows of David, there are lessons for us in the twentieth century. One of them is that we must not usurp the prerogatives of God. It is God's place to judge ; it is ours only to remember the good of the departed, and to leave the rest to Him. An- other lesson surely is that a pure, self-denying love is the greatest of all great blessings. 2 Samuel i. 26. My love for my Brothers, from the early loss of our Parents, and even from earlier misfortunes, has grown into an affection ' passing the love of woman '. I have been ill-tempered with them — I have vexed them — but the thought of them has always stifled the im- pression that any woman might otherwise have made upon me.— John Keats (letter to Benjamin Bailey, 1818). References.— I. 26.— A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, part iii. p. 111. R- E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. ii. p. 263. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 139. Spurgeon, Sermons-, vol. xxxix. No. 2336. I. 27.— E. J. Hardy, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. 1899, p. 327. II. 1.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. Hi. No. 2996. II. 1-11.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— 219 Ver. 18. 2 SAMUEL VII Vv. 18-20. 2 Samuel, etc., p. 1. II. 17-27. — J- Mackay, Jonathan, The Friend of David, p. 193. III. 17. — J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 101. III. 17, 18. — Spurgeon, Ser- mons, vol. xxiii. No. 1375. III. 33. — C. Perren, Revival Ser- mons in Outline, p. 339. III. 36. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2420. III. 38.— J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iv. p. 222. III. 39. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 334. V. 17-25. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xl. No. 2348. V. 23, 24.— J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 291. V. 24. — Spurgeon, Ser- mons, vol. iii. No. 147. V. 24, 25.— Ibid. vol. xl. No. 2348. VI. 1-12. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — 2 Samuel, p. 14. VI. 6, 7. — -A. G. Mortimer, Studies in Holy Scripture, p. 94. VI. 11. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— 2 Samuel, p. 21. VI. 20-22.— J. M. Neale, Ser- mons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 127. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 321 ; see also vol. xxxiv. No. 2031. VII. 1, 2.— ' Plain Sermons ' by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. ii. p. 41. VII. 1-22. — -Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2641. VII. 2. — S. Martin, Rain Upon the Mourn, Grass, p. 56. VII. 4-16. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — 2 Samuel, p. 30. HUMILITY ' Then went King David in, and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am I, O Lord God ? and what is my house, that Thou hast brought me hitherto ? ' — 2 Samuel vii. i8. Saul's failure and David's success are here indi- cated ; and in essence it came to this, that Saul was rejected for pride, and David was received for humility. I. In illustration of all this, one of the most l'e- markable things in the story of David is the way in which he yielded to the guidance and reproof of God's prophets. His attitude of humble praise on this occasion of our text, when Nathan predicted the per- petual dominion of his house, is typical of his temper at all such times. Instead of creating pride and vanity, as it would in a smaller, meaner soul, it crushes him to the dust, makes him feel his unworthiness, and melts his heart with sweet humility. II. Happiness should not separate the soul of man from God, if it be accepted humbly as from His lov- ing hand and loving heart. It should make a man praise God for His goodness, and make him walk softly and gently all his days. Yet, how rare is this humble attitude of heart, gratefully accepting the un- merited blessing and undeserved favour of God. Our common attitude is exactly the opposite. We do not cultivate the thankful heart. III. Pride is the first of the seven deadly sins. Humility is the chief of the virtues, because apart from it none of them can grow to full beauty and power. It is the beginning of wisdom ; the threshold of grace ; the very doorway of the kingdom itself ; the good ground ready for the seed that will bear fruit, some an hundredfold. It was of this humble- mindedness and simple-heartedness the Master spoke when He made little children typical of His Kingdom. We must feel in the presence of such love as Com- munion represents that we have no standing except of grace. We are not worthy to eat the crumbs from His table. And yet He brought us unto His ban- queting-house, gave us to eat the bread of life and to drink the wine of His love. When we have said all we j ust come back to the mystery of redeeming love, and we bow in humble, adoring praise before our Father in heaven. — Hugh Black, Christ's Service of Love, p. 221 . THE SOLICITUDE OF SUCCESS ' Then David the king went in, and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am I, O Lord God ? and what is my house, that Thou hast brought me thus far ? And this was yet a small thing in Thine eyes, O Lord God ; but Thou hast spoken also of Thy servant's house for a great while to come ; and this too after the manner of men, O Lord God ! And what can David say more unto Thee ? for Thou know- est Thy servant, O Lord God.'— 2 Samuel vii. 18-20 (R.V.). I. Who am I, 0 Lord God, and what is my house, that Thou hast brought rue thus far 9 It may seem paradoxical to say so, but in deep, true souls disappointment and disaster often cause less anxiety and questioning than brilliant success occasions. Suc- cess, especially sudden and singular success, brings many heart-searchings and solicitudes. II. To a certain extent this is the right spirit in which to accept accessions of wealth and power. It is a far truer temper than to regard our success as the reward of merit, and to boast ourselves in our good fortune. To recognize our frailties, and to acknow- ledge that riches and honours are God's free gifts, is the true attitude towards all worldly advancement. Yet at the same time we must not permit morbid feeling to blind us to the graciousness of God, and to rob us of the sweetness of the good things He bestows. The ' gifts of the Greeks ' were deprecated by their neighbours, it being generally understood that these favours were prompted by sinister motive or design ; but there is nothing sinister in the bright things freely given us of God. The pagan in the day of his success was afraid of the jealousy with which the gods were reputed to view the uncommon happi- ness of mortals ; but the Divine Giver is better known by us, and His delight in all the pure joy of His people is a great truth of that revelation which is ' the master-light of all our seeing '. It is well to feel our unworthiness of the least of His mercies, yet we may greet the shower of gold or roses with the ut- most confidence and expectation. It is a fine trait in the Christian character when we are able to fill high places and to enjoy goodly things in the spirit of un- questioning trust and appreciation. A suspicious, ascetic spirit is not the highest mood of life. III. If it please God to exalt us. to brilliant posts, to invest us with authority and influence, to dower us with riches, to give us favour in the sight of the people, to establish our house, let us dismiss all heathen solicitude, and, praying for God's grace, use everything for His glory. — W. L. Watkinson, Themes for Hours of Meditation, p. 163. References.— VII. 18.— Walter Brooke, Sermons, p. 72. VII. 18-22.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1166. VII. 18-29. — Ibid. vol. xlviii. No. 2811 ; see also vol. 1. No. 2869. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — 2 Samuel, p. 36. Ver. 19. 2 SAMUEL VII., X Ver. 12. MORE THAN HUMAN ' Is this the manner of man, O Lord God ? '—2 Samuel vii. 19. Again and again we see in the Bible that God is like none but Himself. He has no compeer. He chal- lenges the gods ; He takes them up, as it were, in His fingers, and nails them to the walls of the universe and laughs at them, and asks them to come down and assert themselves in fair reason and in miracles of un- doubted beneficence. As with God so with the Church. We can only live in our distinctiveness ; not wherein we are like other people, but at the point where we are unlike everybody else does our power come in. If the salt have lost his savour, his weight will do no- thing for him or his whiteness ; his reputation was founded in his savour ; that gone, cast him out and let men tread him under foot. You must not try to make God like man, nor must you endeavour to make the God of the Bible like the gods of the heathen. The God of revelation astounds even His most rever- ent prophets and minstrels by His mercy, His tender- ness, His power, and His pity. I. It is the same throughout the whole circuit ot human inquiry. We might say, for example, of the Bible, Is this the manner of our books ? There is no book like it ; it is so curiously composed, it is hardly composed at all ; it seems to fall into place in great star-quantities ; we cannot trace its genesis, its intellect- ual evolution, and its literary polish in its full verbal accomplishment. The Bible is not after the manner of our books ; it is a book by itself, it is many books in one, it is all literature in one statement, and that state- ment is as a burning bush within whose fiery branches the Jehovah of the universe dwells and glows. II. We might say the same thing of the Christ Whom we serve and Whom we adore, blessing His name as we bless the name of the Father. When we watch Him, when we hear His words, when we study His methods, we say, ' Is this the manner of man, O Lord God ? ' Hear the people, the people who did not care for Him, the people who were hostile to Him ; when they returned they said, ' Never man spake like this man '. There we come upon our central doctrine, namely, there is in Him something more than human, more than measurable, more than common. When He came to the end of His Sermon on the Mount, the only sanctuary worthy of such a discourse, the people were astonished at His doctrine, for He taught them as One having authority, and not as the scribes. III. We might say the same thing of the morality of the New Testament. Jesus Christ said, ' Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye cannot enter into the king- dom of heaven ' ; and the scribes and the Pharisees were there, and He offended every man of them. Jesus Christ took the soul back into the very sanc- tuary of the Divine wisdom and grace, and having wrought there in the innermost place the miracle of con- version, He said, Now, down, away to the paths and the market-place and the homes of the world, and love thy neighbour as thyself. Never man spake like this man ! Then take His attitude towards life. Sometimes He seemed to regard it as worthless ; He said, Take no thought for it. Once He even went so far as to say that if any man would gain his life he must lose it ; once again He declared in a startling paradox that if any man would gain his life he should lose it, and if he lost it in the right way he should gain it. There is no making a common line of this Man's talk, it does not fit into any other conversation, it is not an eloquence that falls like splashing water into the cadences of other rhetoric ; it stands alone, it is full of paradox, full of mercy, full of light ; and no man can interpret Christ until he has been buried with Him in the very baptism of a common suffering. — Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 77. References.— VII. 19. — J. Parker, The City Temple Pul- pit, vol. i. p. 77. VII. 21. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2641. VII. 25.— Ibid. vol. ii. No. 88. VII. 27.— Ibid. vol. xxiv. No. 1412 ; see also vol. 1. No. 2869. IX. 1-13.— A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — 2 Samuel, p. 42. IX. 13. — J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 62. X. 8-19.- A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — 2 Samuel, p. 49. PLAY THE MAN ' Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God : and the Lord do that which seemeth Him good.'— 2 Samuel x. 12. What is it to play the man ? It is : — I. To Take Things Seriously — Of Louis XV of France it was said that, being wholly occupied with his amusements, he had not an hour in the day for important matters ; while the best that could be said of our own King Charles II was that he was a ' merry monarch '. There was no true manhood there, to say nothing of royal dignity. II. Cheerful Courage. — But along with this seriousness, this clear and frank recognition of things as they are, there must be also, if we would play the man, that courage for which Joab appealed, and a courage which is something better than obstinacy and dogged endurance — a courage which has in it something of cheerfulness and hope. If you are a man, then, even though you may feel tired, and though the burden may weigh heavily upon you, and though the prospect may not be too bright, still you will set your face and press on. And the harder the battle, the stonier the path, the more resolute you will be not to be beaten, and not to cry out and make a fuss. Of course it is often difficult to play a manly part in this sense. It is especially difficult to keep going steadily on. That is the hardest kind of courage to practise : the courage that is needed in order to persevere. III. The Courage to Endure.— And if you need manhood for patient continuance in well-doing, you need it also, and perhaps more, for patient continu- ance in the bearing of pain and trouble. It is much easier for us to bear our troubles at first than later on. IV. Public Spirit. — ' Let us play the men for the people and for the cities of our God.' It is not only- courage and patience that are demanded of us, but 221 Ver. 7. 2 SAMUEL XII Ver. 7. public spirit. There is no nobler ambition that can possess any man's mind, when he looks out into the world and sees how his brethren are faring, than the ambition to play a true man's part in the defence of the needy and the weak, and in the furtherance, though it be by much toil and sacrifice, of every sacred cause which aims at beating down the enemies of mankind, and bringing in the golden age of which so many prophets have dreamed, and for which so many martyrs have died. That, indeed, is the very Spirit of Jesus. — H. Arnold Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxii. 1907, p. 81. References. — X. 12. — Canon Atkinson, Christian Man- liness, Sermons, 1828-93. XI. 1. — Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 450 ; see also vol. xv. No. 895. XII. 5-7. — A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture — 2 Samuel, p. 55. THE MESSAGE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL ' Thou art the man.'— 2 Samuel xii. 7. The second book of Samuel does not contain any very definite divisions, but seems most naturally to fall into three parts. In the first, which includes chapters one to eight, we have the account of David's public doings. In the second section, containing chapters nine to twenty, we have the history of David's court life. At chapter twenty the third and closing section of the book begins. This section constitutes an ap- pendix of miscellaneous contents. The book closes with the story of the census and the plague which it brought in Israel, with the means taken by David for its removal. As for the main lesson of this book, it is written across its pages so clearly that none can miss it. Wherever you open the book you find the message, ' Be sure your sin will find you out '. I. The Awfulness of Sin. — Sin, as we know, is a theological term. The idea of sin is inseparably bound up with the idea of God. Without God you may have evil, vice, crime, you cannot have sin. Sin is a relation between a personal Creator and the personal creature. Hence it follows that our know- ledge of God regulates our knowledge of sin. The better we know God the better we know what sin really is. In reading the story of David we see something of the malignancy of sin, and learn something of its power. David was a good man. David was a God- fearing man. David's heart was on the whole right with God, yet see what sin did to him. It threw him from the throne into the gutter, and made him go mourning all his days. II. The Limits of Forgiveness. — David sinned, and for months remained with his sin unconfessed and unforgiven. These months David never forgot. But a day came when Nathan reached David. The day came when David could write the fifty-first Psalm, the Psalm which ever since has been the song of broken-hearted penitents. And in that day David received forgiveness. When David said, ' I have sinned against the Lord,' Nathan could say, 'The Lord hath put away thy sin '. And David knew that was true. David was not only forgiven, but he was kept safe, as we can see, to the end of his days in fellowship with God. But even all that did not undo his sxn. He was forgiven, but his household was desolated. III. The Lesson is an Unspeakably Solemn One. — Sin has results which forgiveness cannot cancel. There are consequences of sin which even the grace of God cannot arrest. You may sin and be forgiven, and yet your sin may go down through the ages cursing and destroying men you never knew. — G. H. C. Macgregor, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 129. NATHAN AND DAVID 'And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.' — 2 Samuel xii. 7. Holy Scripture leaves us in no manner of doubt as to the general character of David (1 Sam. xm. 14). So that we cannot doubt of David's favour and ac- ceptance with God befoie he sinned so grievously. Moreover, his own writings have come down to us as witness of his affection towards God ; his Psalms say plainly what his mind must have been, for we still use them, as they have ever been used in the Church of God both by Jews and Christians, as the best ex- pression of our devout affections towards God ; we can find no language so fit in which to clothe our own offerings of praise, or prayer, or thanksgiving ; no words of Repentance so deep and earnest as those in the fifty-first Psalm, where David confesses before God the very sin referred to in this chapter. But, notwithstanding all this, we see David here speaking to Nathan like a man whose conscience made no answer to the parable of the prophet ; we see him so devout before his sin, and so penitent afterwards, yet apparently (for the moment) quite unconscious of his great offence ; so that he needs to have his own righteous indignation turned backwards by the pro- phet's word upon himself ; to be plainly told — ' Thou art the man '. I. We have before us, then, in David's conduct under the reproof of Nathan, an instance of one of the saddest effects of sin ; we see that, so long as it is willingly entertained by us, sin overpowers the con- science and destroys it — that, so long as sin is living and reigning there, the soul is dead, for the Holy Spirit is grieved and silent, or has departed from us ; and, so long as this is the case, all hope of recovery or deliverance is at an end. Whatever our sin may be, we may yet be saved, if we find grace to repent of it. But the very first consequence of sin is a dead- ness and insensibility of soul ; with every advance in sin our own chance of retreat is more and more cut off, and our hope taken away ; it brings, as it were, its own judgment with it. Surely we leave this fact out of our calculation when we think or speak of an act of sin as a solitary and independent thing ; that our consciences will still re- main as now, and forget that our whole conscience is 222 Ver. 7. 2 SAMUEL XII Ver. 13. becoming darkened, and the whole man changed by it. This fact will explain why good men have spoken so strongly of their own sinful state, in a way which may sometimes have seemed to us overdone and un- true ; for it is a reward and consequence of holiness that, as men advance therein, the spiritual faculties become more enlightened ; just as it is a consequence of sin persevered in that the conscience becomes darkened and dead. This, again, should lead us to fear the danger of making false calculations as to Repentance. If we reckon and rely on a future Re- pentance, it is plain that we do it because we wish to • enjoy the pleasures of sin now. And what is this but choosing sin and all its consequences ? This alone is clear — that Repentance will never be so easy as now ; that every delay must make it harder and harder, and remove it further out of our reach ; that our love for God and holiness will grow weaker and weaker ; and the desire for better things, and the knowledge of them, will fade together from our souls. Now is the accepted time, and Now the day of salva- tion. Now — before the power of sin is confirmed, or the Holy Spirit has finally departed from us. This, then, is the one great lesson which we may learn from the record of David's sin. We see him stand before the prophet unconscious of his guilt, and it needs that the prophet should say to him, ' Thou art the man,' in order that he may see himself in the parable set before him. II. We may very well, then, take this warning of the blinding power of sin to ourselves, from the words spoken by Nathan to David. But who shall speak them to ourselves ? Who shall point to God's Word, when they set before us our sins, or say to us, ' Thou art the man of whom these things are spoken ' ? We must undertake to do this for ourselves. We are bound to read or hear the Word of God with this view, that we may apply it to our own state. For, if we will not judge ourselves, we shall be judged and condemned of God ; our sins will never be confessed ■or repented of ; self-deceived and dead in sin, wholly ignorant of our own state in the sight of God, day by